Lighting elements are integral in helping visualise the interactions with music in this project. I’m trying to create something that feels alive, and by visualising this I hope to create a greater connection between the visitor and the music. 

My progress with NeoPixel lighting strips has been an incredible process in introducing me to OpenFrameworks, a programming environment that I’ve been hoping to scratch the surface of for quite sometime. With the help of David Haylock, our experiments have been moving ever closer to the images I’ve been hoping to create. The physicality of the installation consists of 12 suspended sound and light objects. I’ve been attempting to animate the cable that holds these objects, creating the impression that there is an entity, represented visually in light that upon interaction, travels down the cable and fills the object that you as the visitor interacts with. 

This experiment attempts to fill the interactive object with the light that travels down the cable. Combining this with previous experiments with cardboard shapes I’ve been thinking about how that light is then showed within it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrZfBn5a2As&feature=youtu.be

With this next experiment I’ve added a proximity sensor and attempted to give more life to the movement by varying changes in speed and creating a ‘flight’ state, where if the hand interacting is moved away before the light entity has reached the bottom it shoots, seemingly startled, back to the top. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB8pi2v_C5Y&feature=youtu.be

The challenge now is to match this same fluidity and variation in music, to really marry motion, with motion in sound. As I referenced in my last blog entry I’m really interested in the effects achieved between sound and image in the animations of Norman McLaren. I hope that this will create more of an emotional connection between you and the objects. Ultimately I’m creating a musical environment for an audience to create with, where each object is part of a sound pallet. I  like the idea that these voices need to be nurtured and cultivated. They have instrumental qualities but like any creative output it is a changeable process. A big part of the music and the experience is about how we build this connection. It’s a collaborative interplay between you and these entities. By marrying this type of motion in sound and light I hope to express these stages of building trust, familiarity and honing collaboration.