Before we begin all the code for this final project can be found here: https://github.com/cambodia21/final .

Gustavo and I's final project original focused on music and kinetic art. Though we had ambitions to create a visual representation of sound through a pendulum wave machine, this proved impossible due to unforeseen circumstances. However, our final project continued to focus on music as kinetic art and various was to represent it as such.

Some of the previous work we did carried over, particularly getting familiar with the minim library. To begin with we needed to import the library and utilize the Minim class, which provides the methods to gain access audio resources. First you must declare a variable of the type Minim before your setup() function and then instantiate a minim object. The variable of the type Minim was "Minim minim;" in our code. In the setup() we used minim = new Minim(this); to initialize a few things and let Minim access the data folder. We then of course loaded the files in:

  rsong[0] = minim.loadFile("kw.mp3", 1024);
  rsong[1] = minim.loadFile("msd.mp3", 1024);
  rsong[2] = minim.loadFile("kill.mp3", 1024);
  rsong[3] = minim.loadFile("tl.mp3", 1024);
The songs were loaded in with a specific index number assigned to them. Later on you can access that song by selecting that key. For the various effects we used we created a five booleans, by having a specific key trigger a true statement for one boolean and false statements for all others. Because the program begins playing music at the start with
song = rsong[(int)(random(rsong.length))];
song.play();
to be able to play a song later you had to tell minim to song.pause() and select a new song. This is not the same as song.close or song.stop. These either close out the entire audioplayer or stop minim as a whole. The "face" is was created as a class because it made the program run much faster, and it was much easier that way. The constructor takes x and y coordinates. There were two methods in the face.pde, one to create the eyes which do not react to sound, one that creates the mouth which does react. Here is an example of the face reacting:

Here we see the mouth changing in amplitude

Here we see the mouth in a default ellipse with no amplitude input

We include many more "traditional" visual representations of music such as lines and bars:

We also played with adaptations of these two original themes, arranging the bars around a circle for a "sun" effect

Finally we had a free for all combining waves into a ball shape and allowing the beat to expand the wave lengths and change the shape. The background and color change at random

This project contributes a range of ways in which Minim can be utilized to visualize music. It offers a singular grouping that exhibits some of the capabilities of Minim. To the audience it offers a fun way to interact with (by selecting various representations and songs) music as well as an experience. To see more work done by me, check out the rest of my blog. And for more on Gustavo check out his space at http://gustavofernand3z.blogspot.com. 

My part in Gustavo and I’s final presentation was a changing one. With the original idea, music and a pendulum machine, I had done all the legwork and research. Seriously… hours (all for not =[…). I also bought the supplies and built a demonstration of the wave machine for our exhibition night, to show the tangible inspiration. As we had to eventually abandon our work due to circumstances out of our control my role certainly changed. Gustavo and I mutually decided we could do more working with music and the minim library. My legwork regarding the minim library paid off here. As we were on a timeline Gustavo wrote the basic code and I debugged it as he went. After we finished deciding the affects I debugged the program the system. I also wrote the code that allowed for randomly selecting songs. Once that was up and running I worked on making the program run smoothly and efficiently. I discovered a problem with stroke weight and order of selection and fixed the code for that as well. 

My presentation focused on Kinetic Art. This is defined as a form of art that depends on movement for its affect. The stimulus can be either internal or external it need not matter.  My interests are at the intersect of music and kinetic art. Movements propelled by music are extremely compelling.  A wave machine and pendulum movements offer prime demonstration of harmonic oscillation system. Pendulums in a wave machine when displaced from their equilibrium position, experience a restoring force, F, proportional to the displacement, x. The first “wave machine” was designed and constructed circa 1867 by Ernst Mach, an Austrian physicist and philosopher. A wave machine is comprised of a series of pendulums with incremented frequencies. One way to think of the pendulum wave is as a series of points used to sample a wave of increasing frequency. The most popular and compelling demonstration is perhaps Harvard’s example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87VXA6gPuE. Written descriptions do not do the phenomenon justice.  A wave machine demonstrates visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating and (seemingly) random motion. Harvard’s wave machine, takes sixty seconds to complete a full cycle (to come back to the center).  The longest pendulum executes fifty-one oscillations in this time, as the pendulums get shorter there is one additional oscillation. So, the last one completes 65 oscillations. Though the pendulum machine is a prime demonstration of physics the most important formula to understand how to coordinate the movement with music is the wave period formula T=2*pi*sqrt(L/g)*K(θ). There are many blogs that have gone very in depth in regards to this math, so I can redirect you there http://hippomath.blogspot.com/2011/06/making-your-own-pendulum-wave-machine.html.  For processing code that demonstrates a digital wave machine go here http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/28390.

From mid semester to now there is no doubt that my processing skills have grown enormously. I decided to readdress the midterm project and create something better than I could before. The entire work has space theme, and I stole a background from an old poetry project to create stars. It is worlds better than the one I had before. To see the code go to https://github.com/cambodia21/midterm.git