by Adam Parrish
The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction. The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player's path through the game. A Frotzophone "performance" looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you're also playing music.
Here's a sample of the Frotzophone's audio output. This sample was generated from playing the first part of Zork I—up until I got killed by the troll. Download the full track here (2'12", 192kbps MP3).
The following are photographs from past performances. Check back for information on upcoming performances.
NIME @ Exit Art (December 13th, 2007)
The initial impetus for this project came from my interest in maps: specifically, the intersection between maps, games, text and music. What do they have in common?
Interactive fiction has its roots in maps: Will Crowther's original Adventure was a faithful simulation of an actual cave in the Colossal Cave system. In his article A History of Zork, Matt Barton calls Adventure and Zork "interactive maps" (see also Julian Dibbell's A Genealogy of Virtual Worlds). Mapmaking remains an important part not just of authoring interactive fiction, but of playing it as well.
These maps are like any other map, in that they are only abstractions of the space they represent. As the game progresses, these abstract structures are gradually revealed to the player. The area of explored territory grows, and as it does, the connections among the map's nodes becomes apparent: they form branching structures, loops, and rhizomes.
The path that the player takes through the game has its own structure. This path is constrained by the map, but not defined by it; the player must choose which direction to go. Given a map that permits doubling-back, an infinite number of paths are possible. It's even possible to get lost. Movement is further constrained by the game's rules: puzzles that must be solved, obstacles and enemies that can hinder the player's progress, etc.
Here's where the similarity with music comes in. There's a "score" (the game map) that has a recursive, repetitive, and branching structure. There's a "performer" (the player) who progresses through this structure over time. The goal of the Frotzophone is to map the one kind of playing (playing a game) onto the other kind of playing (playing music).
The central component of the Frotzophone is a hacked version of Frotz, a popular Z-Machine interpreter. Information relating to the Z-Machine's object tree—i.e., when objects are moved to new locations (including the player)—is sent via OSC to a ChucK patch, which makes noise. A separate component, written in Processing, visualizes the data (for the convenience of both the performer and the audience).
For more implementation details, see the development blog.
The Frotzophone was created as a final project for ITP's Fall 2007 New Interfaces for Musical Expression class.
