First assignment: Algorithmic Portraiture

robot__me

Robot__me is a interactive interface where you can alter my personal algorithm. The core idea for this project comes from imagining ourselves as a set of rules, just like an algorithm. These rules are repetitions, that everyone daily does, such as drinking a cup of coffee in the morning or taking a shower as soon as you wake up. The question is... what would happen if someone could change your habits?

Step 1: Video shoot

First thing to do was to represent myself in different situations through a video clip. All videos where taken with my phone and then reproduced in Adobe Premier. To make it more interesting, and to provoke a tragic but pleasant effect to the situation, I chose two soundtracks: one was very pleasant, and the other one was a death-metal frustrating-like song.

Making the interface

The interaction of the interface was programmed with Javascript and styled with CSS.

The interface gives the possibility to combine different situations. The combination of keys creates a video where I'm living a new situation. If the combination does not exist, you are warned with a pop up that changes the message every time a combination is mistaken.

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Tech input: Interacting with the Canvas and Web Audio API

The documentation of this lesson can be found on my GitHub page: https://github.com/DanieleMaselli/Interacting-with-the-canvas-Web-Audio-API

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Second assignment: Digital readymade

From vinyl to vinyl

In collaboration with Veronika Golyak, we created a digital ready-made with a vinyl player that was founded left on the street. The main idea was to tell the story of audio reproduction, since vinyl has made a strong comeback in our days. Visualization on the turntable that interacts audio was our goal. Veronika took care of the animation, and I composed the audio track. The project turn out as expected a we grow a lot in the field that we were more worn.

Making The Beat

The audio track was composed with the Ableton Live program. Before assembling the track, we researched on various pieces of news and advertisements in order to further manipulate them. After the track was completed, it was cut into a transparent vinyl for a better result.

Cut the vinyl

Special thanks to Marco Pellegrino from Analogcut for making this possible.

Animation

Projection tests

From the street to the exhibition

Third assigment: Urban Collage

Urban Sound Collage

This project consists in a composition of urban sounds, displayed in a low compression animation. The idea started by compressing audio and images to a low resolution to see the effect of the result. The examined urban sounds are the places where I find myself almost every day. My questions during the development of this project were: what do I feel every day? How does it affect me? Can I compress my usual day in a low-resolution format?

Sounds and images were recorded in the following places:

Hermannplaz Sonnenallee Maybachufer U Bahn Wilmersdorferstrasse Potsdam HBF

Image manipulation

The images of the various places were processed in an animation with Adobe After Effects, creating a composition that is distorted over time depending on the underlined place.

Creating the composition

Each audio track was analyzed and then transformed into a track while maintaining a musical rhythm.

The composition was finalized and exported to the Ableton Live program. The video quality of this program does not guarantee excellent exporting quality. However, the low resolution made this video even more interesting, it added a special effect to it. In the first part of the video, the various places taken into consideration are highlighted with the urban sound, then joined together in an urban collage, creating a musical composition.

Loop Station

Thanks to some research on the web, I was able to build a simple audio loop platform. The various samples are played in Loop and you can play along and create your own custom made urban sound collage.