The Discovery Research Group of Prof. Hannu Toivonen has released a novel musical app for iPhone, Musicreatures.
Musicreatures, programmed by Petri Myllys, is an iPhone app for creating music in a simple, game-like environment. The user controls objects on the screen by tilting and shaking the phone, thereby moving the objects around and collecting new objects to make larger groups of objects. The Musicreatures app then turns information on the screen to music, based on the sizes and locations of the groups of objects. A photo taken initially by the user is used as the background image, and the sounds of objects depend on the properties of the image directly under them. By touching and holding the screen, the user enters an improvisation mode where there is a more distinctive, direct musical response to movements of the phone. Musicreatures is a practical application of computational creativity research, and illustrates how the interaction between a human and a machine can be used for creativity.
The app was already used in a public concert, in the Science Forum on 10 Jan 2015, in an improvisation session with two professional musicians playing bass clarinet and cello. The impro session is available in Youtube.
Musicreatures is freely available in the Apple App Store.
(Update 10 March 2015: added audio samples, replaced figures, and added link to Musicreatures' web page)