Looking Outwards 10: Computer Music

House Party was created by Neil Mendoza for a personal project. It is a musical installation with all of its materials, from furniture to computers, scavenged from trash. Even Arduino Zero, which controls the actuators in the installation, was found in the trash as well. How this works is that each screen is connected to a computer running software written in openFrameworks and the MIDI composition data was sent to Arduino and an OF control program. Then the control program sent the data to other computers over ethernet as OSC. As a result, the control program read the data and triggered the screens and Arduino. When I first saw this project, I was surprised that it didn’t use any greenscreen effect and all the materials were physically present and working. It was even more shocking that all the materials were previously trash. I admire that Neil used his unique artistic sense to create a musical installation that performs in its “natural” habitat.