A Declarative Language for Dynamic Multimedia Interaction Systems

Abstract

Universal Timed Concurrent Constraint Programming (utcc) is a declarative model for concurrency tied to logic. It aims at specifying mobile reactive systems, i.e., systems that continuously interact with the environment and may change their communication structure. In this paper we argue for utcc as a declarative model for dynamic multimedia interaction systems. Firstly, we show that the notion of constraints as partial information allows us to neatly define temporal relations between interactive agents or events. Secondly, we show that mobility in utcc allows for the specification of more flexible and expressive systems. Thirdly, by relying on the underlying temporal logic in utcc, we show how non-trivial temporal properties of the model can be verified. We give two compelling applications of our approach. We propose a model for dynamic interactive scores where interactive points can be defined to adapt the hierarchical structure of the score depending on the information inferred from the environment. We then broaden the interaction mechanisms available for the composer in previous (more static) models. We also model a music improvisation system based on the factor oracle that scales up to situations involving several players, learners and improvisers.

This work has been partially supported by FORCES, an INRIA’s Equipe Associée between the teams COMETE (INRIA), the Music Representation Research Group (IRCAM), and AVISPA.