The novelty of the AIP is not in sonifying wind. Traditional chimes and real Æolian harps have done that for centuries. What we believe is important about our installation is that the behavior of a natural environment is translated into data, in this case MIDI data. Making noise with this data is only one way of employing it. MIDI can control just about anything digital. Indeed, we envision hooking a computer into the AIP and being able to control many parameters of media via the wind sensors. Since most multimedia authoring packages (like Director) allow external control from MIDI data the possibilities for including the serendipity (or emergent behavior) of the natural world into a multimedia project is exciting. Other uses include dynamic image generation, a kind of data visualization to accompany our data sonification.

One particularly interesting example of a direction our work might take comes from the company Steinberg who has released X<>POSE a piece of software they call the "world's first MIDI visual sampler." Available only for PowerMac right now, the visual sampler allows the user to manipulate animations and Quicktime movies via a MIDI keyboard or the standard QWERTY keyboard. To quote the product literature: "MIDI events can be mapped to specific actions such as fades, spins, morphing, and zooms. You can apply effects to a QuickTime movie in real-time, and achieve full-screen (640x480) playback of QuickTime movies without any additional hardware. The effects sequence can be recorded into Cubase and then played back just like any sequence, and to produce the final product, you simply render the sequence to a QuickTime movie." One immediate consequence of this, at least for multimedia designers, is that video and audio are perfectly syncronized since they both exist in the Quicktime movie. We envision allowing wind to control the properties of a dynamically generated movie which, ideally, could be projected onto a large wall or screen. If you've got time and a fast connection take a look at the 20MB Quicktime demonstration of X<>POSE.

Other suggestions for directions to take this project are certainly welcome.