Looking Outwards 11: This City

This City from Mark Wheeler on Vimeo.

“This City” is an audiovisual performance by Mark Wheeler (also known as Mark Eats) meant to explore the parallel between sound creation and what is happening in the real world. In other words, Wheeler was interested to see what happens when music controls the visuals as much as the visuals influence the music. To create the setup of the performance, Wheeler connected two synthesizers to an app that produced the real-time visuals of city traffic. The visuals software was built using openFrameworks and is dictated by a map that has rules for traffic flow, junctions, and traffic lights. The software can add cars, each with their unique characteristics in speed and aggressiveness.

While I don’t know details about the specific kinds of software he uses, he has a tech walkthrough video, which is displayed below: