For all iterations and written responses, please visit the website: https://physics-synthesiser.cargo.site/

If you have any trouble accessing the website, please download a PDF copy of the written responses here:

Questions and Ideas

Iteration 1

• It’s hard to disrupt regular standard, formulated shapes
• Ellipses can be drawn with ellipse function, with curves, with connecting dots, with sin/CO’s equations, with PI equations
• It’s either formulated rigid shapes or dynamic irregular shapes
• It’s hard to stay somewhere in between

Iteration 2

• Start with one physics equation and see where it takes you
• Can I apply forces to colour?
• change the numeric value to a colour value?
• Apply forces to where?
• 3D?
• How do I explore p5.js as a medium?
• How can light be visualised through physics?
• Light, physics, colours

What I did:

• Possible Input
  • Think about what other data you could extract from a song, such as amplitude, volume, frequencies
  • Mic
  • Mouse
  • keyboard

• Physics
  • Newton’s second law – select one, be specific

• Visual output ideas
  • A pile box oscillating
  • Shapes
  • Spring
  • text
  • With/without background
  • Stroke/noStroke

Further explorations:

• What are you actually hacking?
• Articulate the process
• Try different type of sound, human voices, genre
• Try reverse the input and the output

Iteration 3

Pick one version and iterate that version

• Pick one physics law – be specific
• making variations based on that variation
• Reverse output and input
  • what if physics becomes the input and music becomes the output
• Think about the materiality of music, code, physics
  • Music > reverse the speed
  • Sound has speed / velocity
  • Music’s materiality: speed, tempo, oscillation, sonic
  • Physics: velocity, acceleration
  • The physicality of sound
  • How to understanding sound through visual physic
• Make it a one-week project
  • think about storytelling
  • think about how to present your process
  • Hosting all iterations in a website?
• Think about the materiality of your work
  • rendering, resolution, size
• Use gravity to define each spring’s resting direction
• Use different shapes for different sounds
• add pendulum – for constant sound Mouseover instead of mouse click – flipping through a series of springs
• How to create a harp in P5js?
• How do instruments work? Sounds are made when objects vibrate. The vibration makes the air around the object vibrate and the air vibrations enter your ear. You hear them as sounds.
• Shapes change by volume
• 3D + light + Shader – can lose the line
• Sounds: Apply amplitude
• Apply pan
• notes, noises and background? – add more bubbles notes can be more relate to the length of spring
• drawing with the bubble – add function in class page?
• Add pendulum to spring Assign new sounds to pendulum bubble and repeat with attaching spring bubble
• Collision A sound for collision?
• Think about text
• Can text be activate through clicking or dragging?
• Text effect

Key questions for written responses

• What are the key arguments or questions in your select reading?
• Does it make you think a different way or shift your perspective
• Does it support your ideas?
• Be reflective – think about your iterative journey
• Analyse the similarities and differences
• Explain your project, combined with the project
• Your proposed ideas
• Is it working? If not, why?

Feedback for final critique

Working well:

• The first time that people can understand how physics and sounds work without explanation
• Traces of movement
• Translation – the logic and the retoheric
• Clear written reponses

Notes

• Simplied numeric values
• Simplified doesn’t mean it’s wrong
• Logic is translated but the rhetoric has changed or maybe lost, which might lead to new experiences and perspectives
• Geometric shapes signify different meanings
  • String means connection, also used in instruments
  • Circle for organic

Zach Lieberman

My general approach is to settle on an idea for anywhere from a week to a month and to push that idea in different directions. I usually try to pose a problem “how would I attach things to the contour of a body as it moves?”, “how would I make this blob turn into a letter”, and the sketches are my attempt at solution. Sometimes the sketches show me working through the idea, sometimes they push what can happen with the solution.

A lot of times, as an artist, I feel like we’re struggling to find our frequencies and what resonates with the frequencies of the world. This act of sketching is a kind of tuning of these frequencies, trying things that are more harmonious, trying things which are more discordant and generally getting a feel for how others see your work.

Zach Lieberman (2016), Daily Sketches in 2016 https://zachlieberman.medium.com/daily-sketches-2016-28586d8f008e

Lieberman’s set of rules:

• avoid over-used algorithms like delauny triangulation or reaction diffusion in favor of more experimental things.
• avoid random (and to a lesser sense, noise) as much as possible in favor of using mathmatical functions like sin() and tan()
• find sources of inspiration and try to re-code them (for example, I saw this and made this which later led to this)
• don’t take requests or feedback too seriously, just try to develop my own personal intuition. My response to requests was always, “dj doesn’t take requests”
• don’t be afraid to repeat myself or tweak a sketch and repost it
• post the first thing I make that is good enough to share
• surprise myself

Take away

• Set your rules, constraints, system: ideas, time limit
• Record what you did

Learnings about Processing

In Engelbart’s original patent application in 1970 he referred to the mouse as an “X-Y position indicator,” and this still accurately, but dryly, defines its contemporary use.

The physical mouse object is used to control the position of the cursor on screen and to select interface elements. The cursor position is read by computer programs as two numbers, the x-coordinate and the y-coordinate. These numbers can be used to control attributes of elements on screen. If these coordinates are collected and analyzed, they can be used to extract higher-level information such as the speed and direction of the mouse. This data can in turn be used for gesture and pattern recognition.

Reas and Fry, Interactivity, 2014
https://processing.org/tutorials/interactivity

Resources

Terminology

Reading reference: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/293

Newton’s second law

References

Latour, B. (1986) ‘Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together’, Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture at Present, Vol. 6, pp. 1–40. Available at: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/293 (23 Jan 2023).