Ableton pumpkin experiment:
SPlash test
Aim: This weeks prompt was to use Abstraction
and sounded motion. I chose to to visualise music
from Ableton 11 in Unreal. I have been interested in
procedural synth music and emergent systems for a
while. I have been fascinated with artists like Mathew
Gannt, a media artist and noise musician who connects
procedural synth music to real time animation in Unreal.
Method: I followed a tutorial by Sem Schreuder
The set up was a relatively simple MX patch to send
midi velocity to Unreal and creating a midi instrument. It
was my first time using Ableton so I just made a simple
looping synth track. I then enabled the plugin Open
Sound Control in Unreal. I created a new blueprint
which received the output of Ableton and implemented
in it Unreal, I then added an actor to the blue print and
plugged in a scale node so it would change scale based
on received midi velocity.
Inspired by Mathew Gantt’s work “firm” which spawns
random ready-made 3d objects based on midi. I chose
a rotten pumpkin from Sketch fab by Pavel Matousek.
Reflection: The result wasn’t that effective with the
pumpkin as I think the scaling amount was too difficult
to control so the music didn’t seem to line up with the
animations. I later realised this was because I had a midi
effect turned on called Chaos which changes the pitch
and timing but not the midi velocity.
I went back to this later after my reflection and removed
the pumpkin and added in my own particle system
to see if It worked better. I also changed the synth so
that it would just send a sharp drum beat. This worked
a lot better and actually allowed me to see some
experimental motion based more on chance than my
own choices. I can see this as a good tool to try and
break my own expectations so that I can break the
expectations of my viewers. I might experiment with
this later to discover unexpected results.