SEEING MUSIC - MIT HACKING ARTS - 2017

DATA VISUALIZATION | JAVA

TIMELINE: 2 DAYS

My hacking arts team and I were inspired to generate this idea by our mutual interest in data visualization and passion for music. Our generative art visualization hack uses Spotify song attributes such as danceability, energy, valence, and loudness to generate iterative and dynamic non-representational abstract art for three popular rock songs: "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, and "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance.

The story behind seeing music:

Music, particularly rock music, had been important to both of us as part of maturing into adults. We wanted to create a digital monument for our passion using our love of data.

We knew that we wanted to use Processing because of its generative art properties. We used the coding language Python with the spotify-api to first scrape the song data. Then we used the Processing application with Java to create and develop our visualizations. We at first wanted to do entire playlists but felt that those visualizations were too vague and did not evoke the experience of listening to a song. We wanted the user to visually experience listening to a piece of music. 

CHALLENGES

So what did we learn and were able to implement during the Hackathon?

• The visualization should have the music playing in the background for the added experience

• Could this project be iterated on as a form of art or music therapy?

What improvements can still be made?

• We should visualize more songs!

• There should be more experimentation with the interaction between the strokes. Perhaps they can visualize representational shapes as the song goes on.

Our updated version of the work has been featured in the Immersive Atoms winter art exhibition: a tech based art installation within the University of Maryland Media Lab. We hope to visualize more songs with "Seeing Music."