Creation and exploration of a perceptual sonic textures space using a tangible interface

This study takes place in the framework of an ongoing research dealing with the analysis, synthesis and gestural control of sonic textures. Sonic textures include a wide range of sounds featured by random properties in a short-term scale and constant characteristics in a long-term scale. In this paper, we describe two recent contributions related to this field: the first one aimed at providing a sonic textures space based on human perception. For that purpose, we conducted a psychoacoustic experiment, relying on a tangible interface, where subjects were asked to evaluate similarity between sonic textures by gathering them in several groups. The second part of this study aimed at experimenting the control of sonic textures synthesis using a tangible interactive table. We also designed a musical tabletop application inspired by the metaphor of a sonic space exploration. This gave very promising insights on the possibilities offered by such interfaces for the real-time processing of sonic textures