Rachel Lee Looking Outwards 11 Section E

Atlås from binaura on Vimeo (2017).

This week, I decided to investigate Atlås, an anti game environment that creates generative music, by the creative computing collective binaura. Atlås was built using the p5.js library, while simultaneously investigating the autonomy of algorithms and machine intelligence. At the crux, this project generates sounds that correspond to certain qualities of  answers to questions that are solved by machine intelligence. While this concept in itself is fascinating, what I find the most interesting about this project is how the artistic collective was able to generate an appropriate soundscape for the types of questions generated, as the questions are often quite lofty deal with cognitive processes, human communication and environmental factors (these topics are not the easiest things to talk about). Further, I was impressed by how binaura was able to create a compelling visual narrative to complement the experience, which was guided appropriately by the tempo and feeling of the generated music. Overall, I really admire how well the project was executed, especially with respects to the sensitivity of the relationship between the user, the computer, the music, and visual elements of the anti game environment.