iPhone Ocarina App Demo - Ge Wang March 27, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/03/04/Ge_Wang_New_Expressive_Social_Mediums_on_the_iPhone

Ge Wang, co-founder of Smule, plays The Legend of Zelda theme song on an iPhone using the expressive social media app Ocarina.

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Due to their mobility, intimacy, and sheer strength in numbers, mobile phones have become much more than simply "miniature computers," increasingly serving as personal and "natural" extensions of ourselves. Therein lies immense potential to reshape the way we think and do, and especially in how we engage one another socially.

This presentation explores the iPhone as a unique platform for creating new expressive, social mediums. As case studies, we demonstrate and examine how Smule's "social sonic artifacts" (e.g., Sonic Lighter, and Ocarina) were able to take full advantage of the iPhone's intersection of technologies (multitouch, powerful mobile CPU and GPU, full audio pipeline, GPS/location, persistent data connection via 3G/Edge) to provide a unique experience that is at once expressive on a personal level, and social on a global scale. -- Emerging Communications Conference

Ge Wang received his B.S. in Computer Science in 2000 from Duke University, PhD in Computer Science (advisor Perry Cook) in 2008 from Princeton University, and is currently an assistant professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His research interests include interactive software systems (of all sizes) for computer music, programming languages, sound synthesis and analysis, new performance ensembles (e.g., laptop orchestra and mobile phone orchestra) and paradigms (e.g., live coding), mobile music, music information retrieval, visualization, interfaces for human-computer interaction, interactive audio over networks, and methodologies for education at the intersection of computer science and music.

Ge is the chief architect and co-creator of the ChucK audio programming language, and the Audicle environment. He was a founding developer and co-director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), the founder and director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), and of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). He was also a co-creator of the TAPESTREA sound design environment, and a lead developer of audio visualizations such as sndpeek. Ge composes and performs via various electro-acoustic and computer-mediated means, including with PLOrk/SLOrk, with Perry as a live coding duo, and with Princeton graduate student and comrade Rebecca Fiebrink in a duo exploring new performance paradigms, cool audio software, and great food.

Additionally, Ge is the Co-founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer of Smule (a.k.a. SonicMule, Inc.), a startup company exploring interactive sonic media, with mobile devices such as the iPhone. Smule serves as a unique platform for research and development combining the state-of-the-art in computer music research with the potential to bring its visions to a wide population. Ge is the designer of Ocarina, an expressive wind instrument for the iPhone, currently enabling hundreds of thousands of users to not only expressively play music, but listen to one anothers around the world. Overall, Ge's mission is to deeply explore new ways with which people work, play, think, and interact through sound, technology, and music.