Hypno-Bloom is an audio visualizer designed to mimic the shape of a flower and passionately express the shapes of sounds.
I composed the music to slowly build over time until there is an ultimate crashing point in which the flower explodes and
resurrects itself out of techno-music shrapnel.
In order to run the code as seen in the video, open both Chuck files (finalSndPeek and beatish). Start running the finalSndPeek, then chuck beatish.
Reflections
In the original visualizer construction, I let my inner curiosity guide my experimentation. Only once I let go of the ideas I had in my head, I was able to
discover the flower petal and stem shapes that are core to my design. In between the milestone and the final, my main goal was to create a narrative. I felt
like I had created an interesting visual, but it was not emotional nor did it tell a story. This was on the forefront of my mind.
Daydreaming and sketching in my notebook, I came up with a few ideas for ways that the waveform and spectrum could interact with each other. However, when I
tested these ideas on my software, I felt like adding more visual components was actually taking away from the success of the design. It was also at this point
that I realized whatever tweaks I make to the visuals will be way less important than the music I compose for the final video. With this realization, I gave
100% of my focus to the sound.
While reading Ch. 4 of Artful Design, I came away with one question and one piece of inspiration. 1: The question was how can I make a musical composition
that takes advantage of the medium (in this case our good friend Chuck)? Related to Principle 4.5 Design things with a computer that would not be possible without!
2: Paul Lansky's Homebrew is an incredible example of this concept. This was where my brain started to spiral. I was messing around with Chuck, but nothing was
really clicking. I would go from one idea to the next leaving behind a trail of untitled and unsaved chuck files. I tried making chuck-native sounds, I tried
uploading samples, I experimented with LiSa, I looked at the examples from class (the 1k+ lines of code in some of the examples spiraled me further), but it
only dropped me deeper into a bucket of artistic despair. How could I make music? I am not a musician! I am not a coder! Who am I!?!?!
After a night of restless sleep, I awoke realizing that I needed two things: structure and simplicity. Unlike the visualizer aspect where we had a set of starter code
I didn't have any foundation to ground my building. Additionally, I started using a notepad to write out my ideas rather than going straight into Chuck. With a
focused mindset, I was able to begin stringing sounds together. After a relatively small amount of spiraling compared to the day before, I began digging myself out
of the hole and found myself discovering things that interested me. From here, I kept building off small moments of interest until I arrived at narrative. In the
end the narrative came to me. I didn't have to ask it where it was hiding, it simply emerged. Am I 100% satisfied with the final visualizer? No. But I am happy
with where I ended up. Earlier tonight when I had pretty much wrapped up the design, I took my computer out into the living room to show my roommates. Next thing
I knew, the pair was singing a song from the Sound of Music. Seeing their faces light up when the visualizer reacted to them instantly dissipated all the self-doubt
and struggle from the day before. People talk about runners' high, but I think makers' high is where it is at.
I should also note I did have a tiny bit of time to adjust the visuals. The two main changes I made were adding a gradient to the flower and removing some green stems.
I think these small changes simplified and elevated the final design.
Acknowledgements
Starter code for this assignment was provided by Ge Wang and Andrew Zhu Aday. Additional thanks to Kunwoo Kim and Andrew Zhu Aday for providing guidance, support, and encouragement throughout this assignemnt.
I made Bloom because I was inspired by the flower-like form that was created when I translated the waveform from a sound to a circle. I leaned into this and decided to make a stem by rotating the spectrum line six times to create a sort of extruded star shape.
Action Shots
Reflection
I am really happy with where I ended up for this milestone. I spent a lot of time thinking of ideas and sketching things on paper, however, none of these ideas came to fruition. When I started playing with the code and messing with variables I started thinking of other ideas. The real source of inspiration happened when I translated the waveform into a circle. Immediately my eyes said "FLOWER". I could not un-see it. So I leaned into that. The next big design leap was designing the stem for the flower. To do this I rotated the waveform pi/3. The result is this optical illusion in which the waveform rotates so fast that the eye thinks there are six at once. I could have actually made six waveforms, but this happy accident was pretty cool so I stuck with it. I also really loved the shape that it created. For the Final, I want to come up with a sound that really shows its full range. I don't think the song I picked quite does this. I do have a funny story about how I arrived at the chosen song. I googled "harmons and mush song" because I did not know how to refer to something that isn't a harmonic (and still do not) and the result that I got was a YouTube video titled: Fluffy Inside -- Mushroom Harmonics. It was techno and vibey and exactly what I would imagine Bloom Boom would be used to visualize!
