Students will show off talent, hard work, skill and technology Friday night in a computer music recital in association with the NIU School of Music.

The recital will be put on by NIU’s Annex Group.

Students will perform a variety of self-composed traditional and non-traditional music, one performance possibly including a video component.

“Just yesterday, an alum brought in some devices he’s been working on which consists of various types of sensors built into a Christmas ornament that was a silver ball,” said James Phelps, associate professor for the School of Music.

The alumnus was able to control an instrument by moving around and tilting the ball differently while performing, Phelps said.

Some instruments will be homemade, while others could simply look like computers.

“We also have wireless sensor systems that ‘paint’ a room with an invisible grid and the program tracks the movement of, let’s say, a dancer within this space,” Phelps said.

Data that can control any aspect of the dancer such as the sound or image is sent to a computer as the dancer moves through the grid.

“No one is using the wireless sensors at this moment, as far as I know,” Phelps said.