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