is a mixed reality musical instrument designed to explore what is a genuine musical interface in head-mounted augmented reality (AR) system, and how this technology mediates the musical experiences between musicians and their tools.
The interface is composed of tonal cubes arranged in a 3D spiral shape, played through freehand gestures to activate tonal drone synthesis. Musicians can play a combination of cubes for chords or focus on individual ones for tonal experience with poly-synthesised texture. With a flexibility of spatial placement, this allows the musician to become immersed within the super-size shape in audio experiences.
The instrument was developed using autobiographical design, incorporating recent advancements in freehand interaction, a self-contained synthesis mechanism, and aesthetics of musical expression.
The interface was programmed in Unity with Microsoft MRTK, with audio implemented in C# through the [DisunityST](https://github.com/digego/DisunityST) toolkit for real-time synthesis.
We have performed with the CUBE instrument in various setups, and you can watch some of these performances here: