Michael Chladil is an interaction designer,prototyping consultant, and multimedia artist who grew up playing with computers, pianos, and small power tools. While a student at Stevens Institute of Technology he created codeBLUE: a prototype wireless, interactive dance-club system sponsored by Telcordia Technologies, which allowed people with limited musical abilities to experience group musical improvisation. As a student employee of the newly renovated DeBaun Auditorium at the school, he brought professional-quality digital multi-track playback and recording technology to the campus for the first time and continued in his later role as Resident Sound Designer to upgrade the technical capabilities of the facility.
A pent-up desire to build physical interactivemusical systems led Chladil to earn a Master’sdegree at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. As he built various projects during his studies, Chladil began to focus on how to keep hisideas more fluid throughout the process of creating work. He sought collaborations where he could contribute technical expertise and learn ways tosustain creative development.
Chladil’s work at ITP culminated in the modular“rope&pulley” media control system he invented in order to combine the expressiveness and physicality of human gestures with the power and flexibility of digital media to create new multimedia performances. The projects flowing from this modular performance system encompass themes of reuse, emotional expression, and the cyclical nature of human experience. One of the projects allowed four participants to remix and improvise with independent tracks of music. Using loops of rope suspended from floor to ceiling, they could play their tracks forward, backward and at differingvolumes to tailor the musical output to their liking.
As a recipient of a Digital Performance Institute residency, Chladil used the opportunity to developa live performance using large drawing gestures to create synthesized soundscapes with the rope&pulley system. Ultimately, he built another media control prototype and he will be building new engaging performances that incorporate these systems.
Currently, Chladil is supporting the Emerging Media Technology program at the City University of New York. He also continues to partner with clients to develop working prototypes of hybrid hardware/software systems and balances these activities with developing his own work.