In researching for my Thesis on rhythm, I became fascinated with the front cover of the Wire Magazine book cover for “Undercurrents“. It depicts a record player arm on the rings of a tree, so I wanted to do a piece that had the reference of how the needle of the turntable orbits the sounds as well as how sounds change over time.

The general idea was to provide the understanding that our position (or position of objects within a space) have a rhythmic relationship to each other. I understand how far a table might be from me or how close a person walks past me, but I have difficulty fully understanding the simple relationship that all the pieces have together. This project illustrates how the position of elements have relationships over time.

The colors of each of the notes depicted in the piece are inspired by I. J. Belomont’s understanding of the scale and each note’s association with color.

Here is a demo of the application:

In this sketch, I have several instruments that age as they are played. Currently they have two state changes (young and old). I hope in future iterations to continue this idea of aging and rhythm, as well as include the idea of movement within a space. I also want to improve performance and program this for the iPad.

If you would like to try it out, you can download the application here. Once you launch it, just press “f” (make sure it’s lower case), to make it full screen. If you do test it out, it would be awesome to hear your feedback, so please post comments. Remember this is a working prototype.