learning the ropes

On December 13th, I played moneytone as part of the NIME/Algorithmic Composition show at ExitArt. The 6 minute long composition was my final project for Algorithmic Composition, taught by R. Luke Dubois.

The composition was driven by financial transaction data from the past seven years of my life. I’ve been tracking my spending and earnings using software programs since 1998 and wanted to hear what this fairly large dataset (comprising 3143 days) could sound like.

Instead of simply playing a recording of the piece, I chose to perform it live to see if it would be more engaging as a performance. I built some realtime interaction into the Max/Msp patch I was using to sonify the data so I could adjust the intensity of each of the 54 category frequency bands in the piece.

I saw this video yesterday while surfing Björk’s website. It’s ironic. Several weeks ago, Jamie Allen suggested I check out Michel Gondry as a reference for my cardboard work. It turns out that Gondry works with rope and pulleys, too.

Here’s the original Michel Gondry reference. The Science of Sleep

Description:
“Rope & Pulley” is a kinetic sculpture and interface for performing audio. Fabricated from recycled cardboard and old computer parts, it was built with the idea that digital technology allows us the opportunity to endlessly remix and recycle audio. This is evident in both the building materials and in the interaction the piece affords. The rope and pulleys reference the look of an old reel-to-reel tape deck or a magnetic tape loop.

This interface is partly about the idea of looping music, a key to the production of most modern popular music, but also about the juxtaposition of the body motion with music playback and creation.

Process