Respect for this groundbreaking work by an artist I greatly admire. Whether you are a musician, dancer, designer or programmer, this is your complete guide to imagining and building interactive works. Interactive technologies have become a part of many different artistic practices. Nowadays artists make use of sensors, electronic circuits, computation, and algorithms to create engaging aesthetic experiences.

Marije Baalman applies her extensive experience as an artist and engineer and elaborates on different techniques for creating meaningful interactions and presents detailed case studies of a range of artistic work from the field to illustrate the techniques in practice. She has built new musical interfaces since 2002 and has been creating various projects involving realtime data in the contexts of music, dance and installations.

In addition she has been developing the Sense/Stage wireless sensing platform since 2007, which is available through a webshop. She has held numerous workshops involving realtime sensing and mapping data from sensors to sound. Between 2011 and 2016 she worked at STEIM developing hardware, firmware and software for artists. She was also involved in the Modality project, a toolkit for SuperCollider to access HID, MIDI and OSC controllers, and the SuperCollider port to the Bela, an embedded platform for creating musical interfaces.

Since 2016 she is a member of the artist association iii (instrument inventors initiative) in The Hague.

Contents
Forewords
• Chris Salter
• Sally Jane Norman
Part 1 – Interactive Art, the Question of Mapping, and Aesthetics
• 1 — Interactive Art and the Question of Mapping
• Visual Language
• 2 — Aesthetics in Interactive, Digital Art
Case Study I – Roosna and Flak: Dialogue Between Sound and Movement
Part 2 – The Creation Process
• 3 — The Project
• 4 — Development Process
Case Study II – Andi Otto’s Fello: Bow Waves
Part 3 – The Physical Elements and Their Connections
• 5 — Custom Sensor Interfaces
• 6 — Commercial, Off-the-Shelf Controllers
• 7 — Microphones and Audio Analysis
• 8 — Cameras and Computer Vision
• 9 — Elements for Processing
• 10 — Output Elements
• 11 — Connections
• 12 — Communication Protocols
• 13 — Bringing the Elements Together
Case Study III – Steim Tools: Instrumentation for Responsiveness
Part 4 – Understanding Data
• 14 — Types and Roles of Data
• 15 — Characteristics of Data Streams
• 16 — Sampling and Quantization
• 17 — Exploring Data
Case Study IV – Jeff Carey’s ctrlKey: Complex Organization in the Musical Moment
Part 5 – Processing Data
• 18 — From One Range to Another
• 19 — Filtering and Deriving Data
• 20 — Using Buttons
• 21 — Modes of Behavior
• 22 — Mixing and Splitting Signals
• 23 — Output Model
Case Study V – Cathy van Eck: Composing for Objects
Part 6 – Tuning Data
• 24 — Tuning and Calibration
• 25 — Dealing with Disturbances
Case Study VI – Jaime del Val’s Metatopia: Environments for Metaformances and Disalignment
Part 7 – Structure of the Interactive System
• 26 — Time and Memory
• 27 — Programming Structure and Concepts
Conclusion
• Appendix — A Binary Numbers: Bytes and Bits
• References
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• Colophon

“Baalman’s sheer enthusiasm and excitement to share with others her own experience in creating interactive experience is what sets the book apart from others. Whether you are an artist, designer, programmer, choreographer, dancer, or musician, in these pages you will find an A to Z compendium that you can use to better imagine and build interactive artistic works.” – Chris Salter

“Composing Interactions is a significant guide and place-holder that will incite artists to knowingly navigate the myriad possibilities offered by today’s digital technologies. Baalman’s work will undoubtedly inspire actions, interactions, and reactions that feed our ever plural artistic futures.” – Sally Jane Norman

Softcover, 608 pages, published in 2022
256 images, 3 color print