15 February 2018

ookey-Asemic

For this piece, I wanted to create a written language that accurately represented words but was unreadable in a practical sense. I then looked toward sound waves and how they are a literal translation of sounds into a physical form in a “Taking a Line for a Walk” sort of way. It can depict moments of loudness or silence, but in a way that humans can only approximately translate by reading. In the end, my code takes pieces of the inputted audio based on the buffer size and translates them into a waveform “word”. This also gives it the capabilities to work with live audio. For my printed plot, I used a voicemail left from my mother.

One thing that I enjoyed about using the plotter, is being able to enhance my design based on the materials I use. I really enjoyed the look of the fluorescent orange on different shades of blue. I actually found myself unable to capture it accurately with a camera, making it something that can only exist physically despite being constructed digitally. In upcoming audio-based projects, I think it would be better to work with a tool like Max with more audio capabilities to generate something more complex than just a wave form and then export this to be used with processing. I also did not capture video footage of the plotter generating my writing and will be sure to double check the documentation requirements in the future.

// see https://processing.org/reference/libraries/pdf/index.html
//reference taken from minim library
//http://code.compartmental.net/tools/minim/quickstart/
 
import processing.pdf.*;
import ddf.minim.*;
boolean bRecordingPDF;
int pdfOutputCount = 0; 
Minim minim;
AudioPlayer groove;
float col = 10;
int row = 0;
float count = 0;
 
void setup() {
  size(850, 1100);
  bRecordingPDF = true;
  minim = new Minim(this);
  groove = minim.loadFile("voicemail-105.mp3", 154);
  groove.loop();
  beginRecord(PDF, "bnl-smallBuffer.pdf");
}
 
void keyPressed() {
  // When you press a key, it will initiate a PDF export
  count++;
  endRecord();
}
 
 
void draw() {
  noFill();
 
  float[] left = groove.left.toArray();
  float oldcol = col + random(8) + 5;
  col = col + random(50) + 20;
 
  for ( int i = 0; i < left.length - 1; i++ )
  {
    float x1 = map(i, 0, groove.bufferSize(), oldcol, col);
    float x2 = map(i+1, 0, groove.bufferSize(), oldcol, col);
    line(x1, (height/14)*(row) - left[i]*100 + 50, x2, (height/14)*(row) - left[i+1]*100 + 50);
  }
 
   if (col + 70 > width)
   {
     col = 10;
     row ++;
   }
 
   if (row == 13)
   {
       endRecord();
   }
 
   delay(300);
}