CHI Interview: Michel Waisvisz

At CHI I had a chance to interview Michel Waisvisz, this year’s closing plenary speaker. He is based in Amsterdam and has spent his life creating novel electronic instruments as well as expressive electronic augmentations to traditional insutrments.

During the plenary, he performed an improvised electronic piece after explaining his “hands” interface. This interface uses a few “traditional” controller inputs like buttons in combination with more novel pressure sensors, ultrasonic rangers, accelerometers, resampling microphone, and mercury switches. These speak through MIDI to the Lisa-X sound manipulation engine.

His vision is to expand electronic performance to accomodate human expression and he has done extensive work with experienced musicians (for example, violinist Laurie Anderson ) to bring electronic dimensions to their instruments. (Via OK/Cancel)