STEIM (studio for electro-instrumental music), Amsterdam, remains one of the centers for the research and development of new performance instruments and interfaces. In the fall of 2011, I attended one of their Instrument Lab Workshops; I was quickly hooked by the practical and experimental approach to using technology in performance.
Maciej Walczak and I had the good fortune of being artists in residence at STEIM for two weeks in June 2012. Each of us use computer systems live improvisation. We took this opportunity to integrate our systems so that we could exchange control data and cues during improvised performances together. After two weeks of intense R&D, we presented a short concert of new work using newly developed performance tools.
Excerpts from our concert at STEIM, June 2012:
thoughts that never touch each other
Video: Maciej Walczak
Saxophone and digital audio: Frank Mauceri
Time Backwards
video: Maciej Walczak
voice, text, and digital audio: Frank Mauceri
Maciej’s work involves real-time video synthesis and processing. During these two weeks, he constructed a new video instrument, implemented in the MaxMSP-Jitter programming environment. 
I also use MaxMSP for much of my work using acoustic descriptors of saxophone performance to control synthesis and signal processing. At STEIM, we developed routing of OSC control messages between our two instruments. We also made some experiments with using the Kinect camera as a controller.
STEIM has a rich tradition of developing alternative controllers. Not all of my experiments in this field involve cutting edge technology:
