The goal of this research-creation project is to design and build a number of next-generation digital musical instruments for use by musicians and dancers. The project will result in the creation of a new large-scale collaborative work for musicians and dancers incorporating the scientific and technological developments. Based on expertise the team members have developed partly through the Digital Orchestra Project, we have identified a number of significant new opportunities for digital musical instrument design. It is only through having gone through the intensive research required to design, build, compose for and perform on a variety of different instruments in the past that we are able to identify these issues and to be able to conceive of solutions for the challenges they offer.

The specific issues we wish to address include:

• New form factors appropriate for dance and musical performance
• Mapping for digital signal processing
• The incorporation of robust wireless data transfer between the devices and their associated computers
• The use of vibrotactile feedback in the DMIs
• The addition of integrated synthesis engines in the instruments themselves
• The extension of our expertise in the relationship between gesture and musical sounds to the domain of dance.