ORAMICS back to LIVE is a research project that design a version of Oramics for mobile and tablet. Oramics was a graphic sound machine created by Daphne Oram mainly between 1961-1972. The main characteristic that made Oramics to stand out from the electronic devices of its period was the possibility to control pitch, dynamics, vibrato, reverberation, waveforms, and timbre changes by drawing wave-patterns.
This new version for mobile and tablet works as a live electronic instrument. It was programmed in Pure Data and the interface was created with MobMuPlat, an open-source software that runs Pure Data patches and creates useful interfaces for mobile or tablet.
In this presentation, we will review Oramics, its design and creation, and contextualize the history of graphic sound. After that, we will analyze how this version has been created and designed using Pure Data and MobMuPlat, giving programming examples of both softwares.
Melisa Cano (Spain, 1990) is a pianist and composer focused on contemporary music and sound art. Although she is an artist with classical music influences, she is currently working on contemporary music performance and electroacoustic composition. Her main way of expression is using sound as a bruit material, through soundscape recordings and creating electronic sounds with Supercollider and PD. As a performer, she likes to explore different sound effects produced inside the piano sound box and the strings like harmonics, scraping or muting strings. In September 2024, she will premier two of her final projects for her Master’s studies in Electroacoustic Composition: Shiopi, a sound installation; and Labyrinth, a work for piano and live electronics. This year, she has also been focused on her research for the Master Thesis in Electroacoustic, which re-design Oramics, the graphic sound synthesizer by Daphne Oram, creating a live version for mobile and tablet.
In February 2024, she was invited to give a conference about sound art and sound installations at the Royal Higher Conservatory of Music in Madrid, during the IV Jornadas de Música Actual. Besides, she is currently working on her first electronic album, with sounds generated in Supercollider.
