Gbloink! is an interactive visual music toy that exemplifies our approach to creating dynamic systems where users have "semi-control" over musical outcomes. It was one of our earliest experiments in creating art toys that balance user input with algorithmic processes.
In Gbloink!, colorful bouncing balls create sounds when they collide with blocks and each other. The player influences the system by adding or removing blocks and adjusting various parameters of the balls.
Currently you can try an experimental web-based version of Gbloink! directly in your browser:
You can still download the original Gbloink! 1.5 which works in Windows 10.
And it's now possible to get it sending MIDI to a DAW thanks to CoolSoft's Virtual Midi Synth and MIDI mapper. Plus LoopBe1
This makes a huge difference in sound quality. And it means you can record what you are improvising to the piano-roll. So you can edit and adapt it later. IMHO this makes the original Gbloink! (from 1997 but still running on Windows) much more interesting and useful.
We are working on a new version of Gbloink! as part of the project codenamed "World of Cake". More will be revealed soon.
Gbloink!’s music functions at once like a baby’s mobile and a free-improvising percussion ensemble. Nursery-rhyme style repetitions evolve into crunching clusters, then twinkling serial spirals, then nursery-rhyme style repetitions...
... Gbloink!, however is immediately musically perverse. The game-like interface initiates paranoia in the user, who is forced to constantly determine, and repair the block-environment of the balls. Too-high or too low, and the MIDI sounds are muddy and musical. Too-small gaps create annoyingly blurred repetitions. The user is forced to update, to work, (moving ever closer to Repetitive Strain Injury with every mouse click). The user-patrolled environment, while often focused and responsive, can also be annoying. It forces an awareness of the user intentions: ‘is this too tonal? Is this too fast? Is this too clustered?’ These attentions are consistently disrupted and modified as the balls break through the block-walls...
... While the musical results are patently game-like and absurd, there is also a striking sense that the music generated is employable. This author has, in fact, recorded large amounts of free improvisation involving other musicians and the program. There was an even more intense ‘user-paranoia’ during these interactions, for not only did I have to improvise myself, and control the blocks and spaces on screen, but also prevent the generated music from becoming too repetitive or tonal. The interface forces improvisation, and has the same attention to "continual refinement and adjustment" as live music-performance.
-- Tom Rodwell.
