Mandala (A Musical Palindrome)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=_4GbaK22jjw]

A friend of mine sent me this piece recently because of my FaceOSC project. The guy used the planets of our solar system to generate a piece of music by assigning each planet a pitch and then playing that pitch each time that planet completed an orbit about the sun. The periodicity of the orbits of the planets results in a piece of music that is the same as backwards and forwards if you let it play out long enough.

I love this piece for several reasons. One: SCIENCE. Two: I really like the notion of making art from physical phenomenon. Three: as a musician, I enjoy it when people take data typically represented visually and present it aurally.

I really enjoyed the visualizations in this piece: the demonstration of a planet’s natural sine wave and the evidence that the piece is a palindrome. But I think the piece as a whole was too text heavy. A lot of information could have been conveyed visually and might have made the piece more fun to watch.

Meek•FM
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/35146511]

Here’s another interesting project that converts visual data to sound. They built a board that allows you to control letterforms projected by the device. But the letterforms are parsed into sounds as well as light, so the board is also an instrument of sorts.

Again, I love the blending and blurring of audio and visual information. I also love the craftsmanship and interactivity of the board. It strikes me as a very engaging piece. It’s the kind of thing that’s inspired me ever since I was a kid visiting science and natural history museums to make things.

Magnetic Movie
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT2AQC3X5bk]

Based, I believe, on the audio track, this movie is an artist’s conception of what magnetic fields look like. I love the lines; they remind me of many renderings of chaotic maps I’ve seen. I don’t know that this is really a form of computational art, but it is art inspired by science. It’s something of a shame that those are not real magnetic fields, but it’s still fun to watch.