Gestural control of sonic swarms: Composing with grouped sound objects

This paper outlines an alternative controller designed to diffuse and manipulate a swarm of sounds in 3- dimensional space and discusses the compositional issues that emerge from its use. The system uses an algorithm from a nature-derived model describing the spatial behavior of a swarm. The movement of the swarm is mapped in the 3- dimensional space and a series of sound transformation functions for the sonic agents are implemented. The notion of causal relationships is explored regarding the spatial movement of the swarm and sound transformation of the agents by employing the physical controller as a performance, compositional and diffusion tool