Caress is an electro-acoustic instrument built that combines the Bela platform, with Pure Data and a custom made physical instrument. Caress consists of contact microphones with custom preamps, light sensors, joysticks, buttons and knobs. While PureData offers infinite possibilities with regards to interactive sound, Caress focues on a tactile and expressive sound-making expressive enabled by a synthesis approach inspired by the late David Wessel's work on "control intimacy" and Adrian Freed's work on "resonators".
Since the Caress is built atop the Bela platform, the first steps require getting started with the Bela. Once you have a Bela up and running:
This repo consists of these folders:
- Caress: PureData patches for the Caress
- pd-externals: Required compiled libraries (i.e. "externals") for PureDAta
- tests_and_tools: Various in-progress tests and tools
- documentation: Images for this repo
Bela works by reading a specific folder for project files and external dependencies/objects. In order to instal Caress:
- Log into the Bela - either through the Web IDE or SSH
- Copy both the caress and pd-externals folders into
/root/Bela/projects - use the Bela IDE > Settings to set caress as the project to run on boot
The same process can be applied to try out any of the other projects residing in the tests_and_tools folder (which have been placed there as they aren't required for the main caress patch to run)
The caress_bela should run directly after startup (On/Off switch in the middle of device) if properly connected to all hardware:
-
- 2 x strips
- 2 x joysticks
-
2 x piezo-preamps
-
5V litho battery pack
ml.lib is installed in pd-extentions folder if you wish you use any objects in future Bela projects.