I'm much more excited about live-coding environments that foster new structural forms, like Extempore and its siblings, over Tesla coils and triggering techniques that are much, much more in line with traditional innovations.
Machover's Biomuse is over 20 years old and dot-matrix Star Wars is at least 10, and I don't really see those progressing beyond gimmickry, or at the high end engendering loop-pedal and sample-trigger (MPC, et al) artists that tend to hew to standard forms. Sadly, the heretofore promises of computer environments such as MAX/pure-data and even Ableton (when stretched) have caught their more experimental practitioners in a vortex of randomness, likewise let's-see-where-this-goes algo composers under compiled environments like SuperCollider. I'm all for the death of the author, but the book still needs to be legible.
Of course, all of this speaks only to my own preferences. None of us can predict the future.
Suffice it to say that I think the most meaningful musical statements tread a line between tool-exercise (because-I-can sound generation) and songwriting, and playing AC/DC with a Tesla coil really doesn't say much in that context. Now, treat a Van De Graaf generator like headphones so that the person touching it can experience the sensations of static electricity as a component of music, as a frequency-oriented tactile instrument, and I might start turning my ears (and hair) toward the welder-tunes crowd.
Machover's Biomuse is over 20 years old and dot-matrix Star Wars is at least 10, and I don't really see those progressing beyond gimmickry, or at the high end engendering loop-pedal and sample-trigger (MPC, et al) artists that tend to hew to standard forms. Sadly, the heretofore promises of computer environments such as MAX/pure-data and even Ableton (when stretched) have caught their more experimental practitioners in a vortex of randomness, likewise let's-see-where-this-goes algo composers under compiled environments like SuperCollider. I'm all for the death of the author, but the book still needs to be legible.
Of course, all of this speaks only to my own preferences. None of us can predict the future.
Suffice it to say that I think the most meaningful musical statements tread a line between tool-exercise (because-I-can sound generation) and songwriting, and playing AC/DC with a Tesla coil really doesn't say much in that context. Now, treat a Van De Graaf generator like headphones so that the person touching it can experience the sensations of static electricity as a component of music, as a frequency-oriented tactile instrument, and I might start turning my ears (and hair) toward the welder-tunes crowd.