Circuit Bending & Visuallization

2009.11.06.
@Yonsei open theater
Photo by Jinmi Kim


This project was about visuallizing sound. Not just songs or sound that we normally hear from daily life, but some kind of sounds we can controll and distort. So, here comes the "Speak & Spell".



It was not this model that I used, but I forgot to take a picture of it before I destroy it, and I couldn't find the image of right one. It's shape was a craB.

Anyway, I took off craB's shell and tried to modify it's circuit. I had to find which part of the circuit is right for connecting resistance to controll the sound, and I had to test almost every parts of it! It really took a long time, 7 different resistances were tested and two craBs were sacrificed.


1. It looks very peaceful now, but there was a time that I wanted to destroy this.
2. 100k resistance.

There was another problem. I couldn't controll the sound. Of course the sound was distorted with the resistance, but I could not change the speed and pitch with resistance. Yes, this project was about visuallizing sound but also I should be able to controll it and I failed. However, we were supposed to use any kind of sound programs also, so I kindly let computer deal with this problem.



1. ableton live
2. patches I used (metallic, laundry, warning, swirling)

I connected my circuit with the program Ableton Live and it resulted great sound for me(Sorry, but I don't know how to record the sound from ableton so I cannot upload it here...you can follow the screen shot if you want). Tried many different patches and those four were chosen. With these patches, I could controll the sound by turning on / off the circuit.

So the sound part was pretty much done. In visuallizing it, I decided to use Quartz Composer.


original source screen
http://www.quartzcompositions.com/phpBB2/upload/details.php?file=60
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

I have to make a confession here, that I used one of the open sources for quartz composer from web. The excuses are :

1. I didn't know how to use Quartz Composer.
2. I don't know how to use Quartz Composer yet. My brain doesn't react to these kind of processing programs.
3. I was in a boundless ocean.
4. ......

So I downloaded one of the sources and those are screen shots of it. Of course I didn't use this patch as it is. I tried to modify it as possible to fit it into the circuit's distorted sound.
Here are few tryouts.




I was able to change the number of lines, color, saturation, and mirror effect. I also removed the grid from background and adjusted the level of increasement / decreasement. The biggest change was happened in the motion. While the original shape of object was 2D expanding circle panel (and camera was moving around to make this patch 3D), changed object was able to twist iteself in 3D. When the sound is louder, I could get more twisted and expanded object image.



1. original patch & parameter
2. changed patch & parameter

With increasing / decreasing scales modified, I could get just clear black screen without any objects when there was no sound. And also object reacted more sensitivly to the sound resulting a very dynamic image on the screen.



And finally, we had our performance at Yonsei open theater. We had two projectors so we could have mirror image. It was freezing outside.



God damn it, that was a long brief...