Ben Houge | Berklee College of Music (original) (raw)
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Papers by Ben Houge
“The Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias” is a setting of a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy for voice and... more “The Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias” is a setting of a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy for voice and audience members’ mobile devices, composed by Ben Houge, based on software developed by Ben Houge and Javier Sánchez. During a performance of the work, a vocal soloist sings the poem in Greek, recording fragments of his or her voice using a custom application; these recordings are distributed wirelessly to the mobile devices of audience members for further processing and deployment, providing the crowd-distributed accompaniment to the soloist, with no other sound reinforcement required. The result is a uniquely portable and scalable performance environment in which the audience enables the work without directly interacting with it, representing an underexplored realm of app-based music performance.
This paper presents an overview of the work’s genesis and antecedents, a description of the technology developed to enable the performance, and a discussion of its unique aspects and aesthetic ramifications. In closing we share some of the challenges related to presenting a piece that involves audience members’ mobile devices, including a comparison of the work’s two incarnations: as a native iOS app and as a web app using the Web Audio API.
Tom Clancy’s EndWar, a real-time strategy game developed by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio for Xbox 36... more Tom Clancy’s EndWar, a real-time strategy game developed by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and released in November 2008, featured an innovative, cell-based music deployment system that allowed for extreme variability and tight responsiveness without sacrificing production values. This paper describes the core functionality of this system in the context of the game.
Music has become a ubiquitous element of the restaurant soundscape, one that even in the most cal... more Music has become a ubiquitous element of the restaurant soundscape, one that even in the most calculated dining environments is commonly relegated to the role of a background mood enhancer. In a series of events that I call “food operas,” I have explored ways to pair food and sound more overtly, using techniques adapted from my work in the video game industry to synchronize music with different courses, to conform to the indeterminate durations of dining room states, and to provide variation over the extended length of a multi-course meal. This paper describes the challenges of building a sound deployment system for a restaurant that delivers and coordinates a customized soundtrack for each diner, while also examining the expressive potential of this new genre.
“The Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias” is a setting of a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy for voice and... more “The Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias” is a setting of a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy for voice and audience members’ mobile devices, composed by Ben Houge, based on software developed by Ben Houge and Javier Sánchez. During a performance of the work, a vocal soloist sings the poem in Greek, recording fragments of his or her voice using a custom application; these recordings are distributed wirelessly to the mobile devices of audience members for further processing and deployment, providing the crowd-distributed accompaniment to the soloist, with no other sound reinforcement required. The result is a uniquely portable and scalable performance environment in which the audience enables the work without directly interacting with it, representing an underexplored realm of app-based music performance.
This paper presents an overview of the work’s genesis and antecedents, a description of the technology developed to enable the performance, and a discussion of its unique aspects and aesthetic ramifications. In closing we share some of the challenges related to presenting a piece that involves audience members’ mobile devices, including a comparison of the work’s two incarnations: as a native iOS app and as a web app using the Web Audio API.
Tom Clancy’s EndWar, a real-time strategy game developed by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio for Xbox 36... more Tom Clancy’s EndWar, a real-time strategy game developed by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and released in November 2008, featured an innovative, cell-based music deployment system that allowed for extreme variability and tight responsiveness without sacrificing production values. This paper describes the core functionality of this system in the context of the game.
Music has become a ubiquitous element of the restaurant soundscape, one that even in the most cal... more Music has become a ubiquitous element of the restaurant soundscape, one that even in the most calculated dining environments is commonly relegated to the role of a background mood enhancer. In a series of events that I call “food operas,” I have explored ways to pair food and sound more overtly, using techniques adapted from my work in the video game industry to synchronize music with different courses, to conform to the indeterminate durations of dining room states, and to provide variation over the extended length of a multi-course meal. This paper describes the challenges of building a sound deployment system for a restaurant that delivers and coordinates a customized soundtrack for each diner, while also examining the expressive potential of this new genre.