This week, my project has seen a transition into an attempt to emulate musical patterns/choreography using the same cars I used last week to emulate arbitrary patterns. The cars now in a manner that is supposed to be representative of different instruments in a musical ensemble, all working together to perform a “song”.

Each car in this new performance has 10 movements of varying length. There are 12 of these cars, but they are placed in 4 groups of 3. Each of the groups have the same controller, and thus, perform the same 10 movements. These groups are the different “instruments” in this performance. They have different movements to create a sort of musical disorder that one sees commonly in songs, and then come together to create a resolution, or an end to the song or phrase of music.

The physical representation of this simulation that I would build is exactly what I built in simulation. 12 identical cars with four different controllers moving across a space to simulate notes of music. I could also experiment with giving the cars different coloring based on their instrumental group.

-Jordi Long