I collaborated with xname on a performance as xynaaxmue on Saturday, audio+video up soon I hope.. xname performs with circuits that turn light into sound, improvising noise using stroboscopic lights. I was live coding with tidalcycles, as ever.
In the past I’ve created flashing patterns on an external monitor for xname’s circuits to feed off, check here for a recording of that one. This time I wanted to control a pair of RGB flash panels over DMX.. I used a tinkerit DMX hat for the arduino, officially retired but you can still find them online and the library is downloadable on github.
I hacked together a Tidal interface the night + morning before the conference, and it worked pretty well.. The Haskell and Arduino code is here.
With everything loaded up, Tidal code like this triggers flashes of light as well as sound:
x2 $ every 2 (slow 2) $ (jux (rev) $ foldEvery [5,7] (slow 2) $ (slowspread (chop) [64,128,32] $ sound "bd*2 [arpy:2 arpy] [mt claus*3] [voodoo ind]")) # dur "0.02" # nudge (slow 4 sine1) The basic features:
- sound – (sample name) is translated into colour in a semi-arbitrary way (a mapping which falls back on some crypto hashing)
- pan – (kind of) pans between the two lights
- dur – controls the duration of the flash
- the flashes have a linear fade, which works across chop and striate
- it is kind of polyphonic but the colour mixing can be improved.. mixing coloured light seems to get into the realm of philosophy though !
Will update with documentation of the performance itself when it’s up.
