Musical toys: interactive audio for non-musicians

This paper describes the design and implementation of interactive sound installations using open source software. Aimed at encouraging an audience of non-musicians to explore electronic sounds, the features identified as the key elements in their design were robustness and responsiveness: an interface that is reliable, intuitive and easy to learn, and yields rich and interesting sounds. The main method of achieving this aim was using a single sensor as an input device and mapping the input data in multiple, concurrent ways to sound generation and manipulation parameters.