John

Clarence

Torbjörn

Chris

hSi

hSi
The Headspace Instrument [hSi] is a highly sophisticated and powerful electronic musical instrument, controlled by subtle movements of the player's head coupled with a small but delicate and precise air column, as in a wind instrument.

It is the culmination of a project when Carnyx & Co, working with funds donated by the Deagio Foundation, commissioned composer and sonic inventor Rolf Gehlhaar (see below)to create a new musical instrument which would enable the tetraplegic musician Clarence Adoo to engage with fellow performers at the highest professional level.

''Clarence would have to be able to, only by moving his head, control whatever virtual instrument I could provide. I looked about for possible solutions for mouse-movement control, finally discovering a head-pointing system that takes the place of a mouse: move your head and the mouse-cursor moves on the screen; puff on the tube to make selections. Pointer control is fast, smooth and accurate.

Once the question of control was solved, I was then able to develop the virtual instrument hSi, employing the object-oriented musical programming environment MAX/MSP.

The Headspace Instrument is in fact a large library of instruments, each of which is further programable in order to generate, process and manipulate sounds in different ways; Clarence is thus able to manipulate the instrument in completely predictable ways, employing his visual and aural skills.''

The first public performance took place at the St.Magnus Music Festival on 22 June 2005.

Rolf Gehlhaar
Composer, musician, digital artist, teacher, humanist and inventor of sound=space and the Headspace Instrument.

Rolf grew up in Germany, New Mexico and California, attending schools in Alamogordo and Santa Barbara. In 1961 he attended Yale University, studying science, philosophy and music, and in 1965 began graduate studies in music at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1967, having studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen who was that year a visiting professor at the University of California, Rolf was invited to become Stockhausen's private student and personal assistant in Cologne, Germany. Gehlhaar worked closely with Stockhausen over the next four years. Rolf became the sixth member of the Stockhausen Ensemble - a group of outstanding musicians who were highly influential on the European contemporary musical scene of the time.