SectionC – Page 31 – [OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Fanjie Mike Jin—Looking Outwards—04

This sound installation is titled “Chijikinkutsu”. It is created by a Japanese artist, Nelo Akamatsu. The name of the title is a sound installation ornament fro traditional Japanese gardens in the 16th century. In “Chijikinkutsu”, sewing needles are floating on water in glass tumblers so they are affected by the magnetism field and would turn like a compass. When electricity is applied to the coil, the needle would hit the glass and create a very delicate sound. This a very minimal approach but with this few elements, the sound it generates are rather complex and colorful. I particularly appreciate this project in that it uses the magnetism as the input parameter and as the magnetism field would be different in different parts of the world, the resultant sound installation would be different.

Video featuring the sound performance

view of the installation
from http://www.everydaylistening.com/articles/tag/glass

Joanne Chui – Project 04 – String Art

sketch

// Joanne Chui
//jchui1@andrew.cmu.edu
// Assignment-04-A
// Section C 

function setup(){
	createCanvas(400, 300);
	background("black");
}


function draw(){
	for(let i = 0; i < 25; i++){
		ay = i * 6;
		bx = 200 - (i * 8);
		cy = i * 12;
		dx = i * 16;
		stroke(220, 255, 150);
		strokeWeight(.1);
		//"quad1"
	 	line(200, ay, bx, 150);
	 	//"quad2"
	 	line(200, ay, 200 + bx, 0);
	 	//"quad3"
	 	line(400, cy, 400 - bx, 0);
	 	line(200, 150 + ay, 200 + bx, 0);
	 	line(200, 150 + ay, 400 - bx, 300);
	 	//"quad4"
	 	line(0, 150 + ay, bx, 150);
	 	line(dx, 300, 400, 300 - cy)
	 	line(200, ay, bx, 300);
	}
}

I created this image based on the idea of fabric, and trying to make the lines appear as a continuous surface. This is why there aren’t any endpoints floating in the canvas, and everything is connected.

Sean Leo – Looking Outwards – 04

HarmonicTunes – Published on Nov 13, 2010

Chiptune music, or chip music, is produced mostly using video game consoles and home computer technology. Musicians utilize the sound card found on those devices and generate patterns to create their music. Most notably are musicians using the Nintendo Gameboy to create their sounds with. What I find so interesting about chiptune is that there’s an aspect of nostalgia, as we all have been accustomed to 8-bit plings and beeps growing up in an age of fast media advancements. Now the sounds feel old, and out-dated. Which, honestly, is apart of it’s appeal to me. It is choice to not use the newest, highest fidelity systems, and instead use a consumer product from an entirely different industry. Part of the rise of chiptune was it’s accessibility. If you had a game boy you were already half way there. The music from those games are iconic (we could probably all whistle the Mario theme, whenever asked), so to have those same sounds be created in a live setting with the energy of a punk show; it’s incredibly fun.

Sean Meng-Looking Outwards-04

Aders Lind generating sounds by appraoching to the LINES

link: https://cycling74.com/projects/lines-interactive-sound-art-exhibition/

LINES is an interactive sound art exhibition created by Swedish composer Anders Lind in 2016. Lines attached to the wall, on the floor and hanging from the ceiling in combination with sensors and electronics are forming three novel music instruments. No musical experiences are required to perform, while the well-experienced musician or composer finds new musical challenges and opportunities with the instruments. The ambition with LINES is to enable: new forms of musical interaction, an exploration of new artistic expressions and to provide unique and inspiring musical experiences. And more than and art installation, it creates people’s interaction by enabling them playing and composing together with LINES.

Kimberlyn Cho- Looking Outwards- 04

Meier & Erdmann’s single, “Howler Monkey” uses a computational algorithm to visualize the driving sounds of the song in the music video. The algorithm was created by Victor Doval using both Processing and Blender (specifically the Sverchok add-on). The music video shows charcoal structures, archways, and spheres that constantly evolve to portray the “landscape”in sync with the music. The audio data from the spectrum of sound in the song determines the shape, material, and lighting of the objects in the video.

I really appreciate the experience provided by this computational music video. By accommodating a 24-hour timelapse in 290 seconds, the audience is able to watch the sunrise to the sunset, which evokes a “dreamy” experience for contemplation. I think its a great way to create a deeper relationship between the music and the music video in terms of the audience’s experience. By correlating the music to the visual art, musicians are also able to create unique videos for their music which I find more personal and thoughtful.

created by Victor Doval for the music video of “Howler Monkey” 2017

Taisei Manheim – Looking Outward – 04

The project that I chose was Game of Skill 2.0 by Christine Sun Kim, which was presented at MoMA P.S.1. Christine has been deaf since birth and through this exhibit she attempts to show her subjective experiences with sound. Viewers were invited to hold an old fashioned radio with a staff and drag it along a velcro strip hung above their heads. As they walk with the staff being dragged along the strip, a sound is emitted at different levels and speeds depending on the direction and speed that the viewers walk in. By making the viewer exert a special effort in order to comprehend the sound, Christine shows the labor involved with listening, which is usually a passive activity. Christine has always been fascinated by how people take hearing for granted and through this exhibit affects how people interpret their own hearing of sounds. I admire how Christine was able to take the parts of sound and hearing that we usually don’t think about such as the act of hearing itself and how sight connects with hearing and made people face these questions that she faces on a daily basis.

Looking Outwards – 04 – Joanne Chui

Milkdrop is a music visualizer that was first created in 2001 by geissworks. It starts out with multiple preset options to start from, in which the music would work to morph and distort certain variables in the presets. Users are allowed to also customize and create their own presets, even being able to write new code to be able to have more control over the visualization. I really like this aspect of the music visualizer because it allows for the program to be extremely user friendly and evolve further from the original program/creator’s intent. It seems that the algorithm relies on a lot of variables, such as color, speed, etc… in which the inputs are constantly being edited depending on the music. I wonder how the visualizations would be different if you were able to start without a preset, and base all the initial variable inputs on the music itself, rather than having the music edit the preset.

http://www.geisswerks.com/about_milkdrop.html

Ammar Hassonjee – Looking Outwards 04

A Real Time Climate Sound Controller

Photograph of Adrien Kaeser operating his climate sound controlling machine taken from Creative Applications Net.

A researcher from ECAL named Adrien Kaeser recently invented a custom sound controller he named “Weather Thingy” in January, 2018 that interprets real-time climate data to adjust the parameters on musical instruments such as a piano. His device is comprised of parts such as a weather station that collects climate data and a controller to the station that translates the weather related data into a data type that can be understood by electronic instruments called midi data.

The artist’s purpose was for anyone engaging the project to be able to listen and feel the real time effects of the weather through their sense of sound based on the compositions the instruments are playing. I admire this project’s goal to take two forms of data that are not commonly related to each other, yet find a way to program an input and conversion of one dataset of weather data to another in sound data. The project allows us to feel the weather using a sense we don’t typically use for that purpose in our sense of hearing.

Video showing the project operating and a visual of all its components.

Jasmine Lee – Project 03 – Dynamic Drawing

jasminedrawing

//Jasmine Lee
//Section C
//jasmine4@andrew.cmu.edu
//Project-03 (Dynamic Drawing)

var r = 10;
var g = 100;
var b = 50;
var angle = 0;
var sizeX = 10; 
var sizeY = 15;
var circlesize = 80;

function setup() {
    createCanvas(640, 480);
}


function draw() {
    //change background color
    background(r + mouseX , g + mouseY, b);

    noStroke();


if (mouseX > width / 2) {
    rectMode(CENTER)
}
    push();
    translate(width / 2, height / 2);
    rotate(radians(angle));

    //rectangle
    fill(r + mouseX - mouseY, g + mouseX, b + mouseY)
    rect(mouseX, mouseY, sizeX, sizeY);
    rect(mouseX + 5, mouseY + 2, sizeX + 2, sizeY + 2);
    rect(mouseY - 100, mouseX - 220, sizeX, sizeY)
    rect (mouseY - 150, mouseX - 130, sizeX - 30, sizeY - 30);

    //rectangleset2
    fill(r - mouseX + mouseY, g - mouseX, b - mouseY)
    rect(mouseX + 50, mouseY - 50, sizeX / 2, sizeY / 2);
    rect(mouseX - 50, mouseY - 60, sizeX / 3, sizeY / 3);
    rect(mouseY - 100, mouseX - 220, sizeX / 4, sizeY / 5);
    rect(mouseX - 150, mouseY - 130, sizeX - 30, sizeY - 30);

    //rectangleset3
    fill(r - mouseX + mouseY, g - mouseX, b - mouseY)
    rect(mouseX / 2, mouseY / 2, sizeX / 2, sizeY / 2);
    rect(mouseY / 5, mouseX /5, sizeX + 100, sizeY - 100);
    rect(mouseX, mouseY, sizeY, sizeX);
    rect(mouseX - 150, mouseY - 130, sizeX - 30, sizeY - 30);



    pop();

    //constraining size of the ellipses
    var m = max(min(mouseX, 640), 0);
    var size = m * 350.0 / 640.0;

    //ellipse 1
    fill(r + mouseX / 2, g + mouseX / 2, b + mouseX / 2);
    ellipse(width / 2, height / 2, size, size);

    //ellipse 2
    fill(r + mouseX / 2, g + mouseX / 2, b + mouseX);
    ellipse(width / 2, height / 2, size * 0.9 , size * 0.9);

    //ellipse 3
    fill(r + mouseX, g + mouseX / 2, b + mouseX / 2);
    ellipse(width / 2, height / 2, size * 0.7 , size * 0.7);

    //ellipse 4
    fill(r + mouseX / 2, g + mouseX, b + mouseX / 2);
    ellipse(width / 2, height / 2, size * 0.5 , size * 0.5);


    angle = angle + 0.5;
    sizeX = width - (0.5 * mouseX);
    sizeY = height - (0.5 * mouseY);
}

I was inspired to create this dynamic drawing by the animations that show music beats. I tried to convey a bright, energetic atmosphere by using different variations of colors and undulating shapes.

Jasmine Lee – Looking Outwards – 03

This week, I chose to explore the world of parametric design and crafting by looking into artist Jimmy Jian‘s ceramic pieces. He creates a variety of ceramic containers through 3D modeling. Using Grasshopper (a Rhinoceros 3D plugin), he is able to produce many iterations of whichever design he is working on at the moment. What I appreciate most about his pieces are the elegant, repeating qualities they have, simplistic in form but complex by nature.

A few of Jian’s recent ceramic pieces, demonstrating the variety of patterns he is able to produce.

Jian’s process involves first modeling the forms using Grasshopper. Then, using a 3D printer, he is able to print out the forms to a very high degree of accuracy. Those forms are then inserted into plaster to create molds, which are then used to slip-cast the ceramic pieces. The resulting pieces are then glazed in various colors and fired. This workflow allows Jian to replicate the pieces in any number he wishes, as long as he keeps the mold intact. The artist’s sensibilities show in the color of the glazes he uses, keeping to shades of blue and blue-green. He also seems partial to subtle, repetitive patterns.