Luna: An AR Musical Instrument on the Meta Quest 2

Samuel Dietz; Charles Martin

• Format: poster
• Session: posters-3
• Paper link

Abstract:

Head-mounted augmented reality (AR) computers present the opportunity to develop new musical interfaces that would be impossible to build physically or with conventional computing devices. Unfortunately, typical computer music tools have not been easy to apply within AR development tool chains. Integrating standard computer music tools in AR development would allow more rapid prototyping of new instrument ideas and transfer of knowledge from experienced computer musicians. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that AR digital musical instruments can be developed using libpd, the library version of the standard computer music environment Pure Data. We present a case study of an AR instrument developed for the Meta Quest 2 integrating libpd in the AR development tool-chain for the interactive audio components. The iterative development process was tracked through autoethnographic reflections and analysed with thematic analysis. We found that Pure Data was an effective way to develop audio interactions on the Quest 2 and that the hand tracking on this platform was capable of complex gestural interactions. This work could enable a broader community of computer musicians to explore AR NIME development, taking advantage of the unique affordances of this medium.