HCI & real-time audio

Tranquil Tonescape is a customizable, intuitive ambisonic soundscape meant to help users relax and aid with managing stress, by allowing them to create their own 3D soundscape using a bank of meditative and relaxing sound sources. The user has access to a variety of controls to select whichever (and how many) sounds they want for their relaxing soundscape, and place them wherever they want in 3D space to create a perfect, personalized mix for reducing anxiety.

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Originally, Tranquil Tonescape was created using MaxMSP for the audio backend and TouchOSC for the user interface. The TouchOSC interface ran wirelessly on an iPad, connected to the Max patch on a laptop. It was debuted in Columbia College Chicago's reverb chamber using a surround sound system, which allowed the user to physically walk around the space holding the iPad as they changed parameters.

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Later on, I ported Tranquil Tonescape to web, which can be found here. I recreated the project from the ground up using HTML and CSS for the UI and JavaScript (using the Web Audio API and JSAmbisonics libraries) for the audio backend. The main goal was to take the original concept and make it an actually accessible, practical tool rather than just a piece of sound art. The app functions best on Chrome and works on both desktop and mobile, and is best used with headphones to take advantage of the binaural playback.

Ever since hearing Christina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks, I’ve had an interest in harnessing the potential of sonifying the electronics that surround us in our daily lives. The overarching concept for my instrument, the Electronic Sonifier, is to turn these fascinating, but somewhat strange, sounds we get from using an EMF (electromagnetic field) mic into something usable and manipulable for musical expression. As such, the instrument has three parts - the electronic device/devices generating EM fields, the EMF mic picking up and converting these into an audio signal, and the SuperCollider software responsible for manipulating and playing back the end result. As such, the instrument is deeply flexible and interactive, allowing for the user to make use of any regular electronic device they own, such as their phone, their laptop, a lamp, a TV remote, a gaming console, etc., as part of the instrument. This is encouraged as well, since each device emits a wholly unique and interesting EM field that can be changed by interacting with the device as well, on top of the interactivity afforded by the musical parameters present in SuperCollider.

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Whilst working on this project, I developed my own implementation of an AutoTune algorithm in SuperCollider based more around mathematics than computer logic, making it robust enough to run without needing complicated checks and keeping latency low. I also composed a piece for this instrument called Electrosonics and performed it live at Columbia College Chicago.

[Live performance/demonstration video will be added later]

The code for this project can be found at my GitHub repo here.

Steps and Leaps is an auditory art piece that aims to simulate the journey of a rocket launching from Earth and making its way into the stars, passing satellites and communicating back to Earth along the way. Notably, however, this patch is an audio effect, not a piece of music. Therefore, it does not generate any audio of its own - it only applies effects to an input signal. You can input any sound file you like, whether it's music, dialogue, or anything else, and it will be used as the basis for the effect. It uses a variety of different effects including FFT filters, a Leslie speaker effect, vocoding, and more, all programmed inside Pure Data. 

[Audio sample will be added in the future]