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Koan Heads
This demonstration works only with Netscape
Mixing your own music requires the Koan Plugin for Netscape > 3.0.
There is also an ActiveX plugin for Internet Explorer, which I
have not tried. Make sure to get the version 4 MIKE plugin.
Instructions: drag the mouse over one of the three heads
for a temporary mix. Click on a head once to start a voice and a second time
to stop the voice. NOTE: Make sure to have the entire picture visible
in your browser; otherwise, you will not see the text tags when you pass
your mouse over the heads.
How does this work?
Netscape created Javascript as one method of communicating between
the browser and a
plugin, which may be written in a variety of
programming languages such as C or C++. SSEYO created a plugin (called
MIKE V4 Koan LiveConnect Plugin for Netscape > 3.0)
as well as a Javascript-based
interface to this plugin. This means, effectively, that you can interweave
HTML-based multimedia with their plugin, which serves as a music "engine"
for Generative Music. Pictures and videos, along with other hypermedia
content, can now be mapped to music. The music, itself, is created using
one of SSEYO's content-creation programs such as Koan X or Koan Pro. The
above piece was made from Koan Pro Version 2.0 but Koan X would also be
quite suitable.
The steps in creating a musical piece such as the one above consists of
several steps:
- Create a Koan File (such as an .skd or .skt file). I created a piece
with 8 voices. The first three are assigned to the background sound that
you hear when no head is playing. The first head plays a bell: voice 4.
The second head plays voices 5 and 6 (Drums), while the third head plays
voices 7 and 8 (flute with ambience). Heads are numbered 1 to 3 from left
to right. Other Koan music and streaming digital RealAudio can be
heard in my computer
music page.
- Create a digital image. It can be a scanned picture or computer-generated.
The above image is one that I created using a variety of tools:
Bryce 2, Poser, and Corel PhotoPaint for touchups. Other artworks that
I have produced can be found in my computer art page.
- Create an image map so that when the user passes over a specific area
of the image, or clicks the mouse in that area, an event occurs. I used
LiveImage
for this purpose. It allows an interactive, draw-like approach
to segmenting an image into the right sized and shaped areas. It will
output HTML which you will then have to insert into your larger HTML file.
- What larger HTML file? Well, you need to set up the HTML file so that
it properly communicates with the Koan engine (plugin). To do this, I
suggest just copying the source of this web page (View Page Source) and
putting in your own image and "AREA" commands created from LiveImage.
- At SSEYO, they have a complete online reference guide for all of the
Javascript function calls that you can use. I have used only a fraction
of what is available, and the only parameter that I modulate via Javascript
is Volume, so I have only scratched the surface.
Your best bet is to save a copy of this file from your browser using
"FILE--SAVE AS" and then substitute your own image and Koan file.
Many thanks to Pete Cole of SSEYO for help in Javascript suggestions
and corrections.