Augmented Selfies – Cem Alemdar

For this project I wanted to make music with the webcam image. I wanted to have different points on the camera that would play certain sounds depending on their luminosity, but realized that luminosity is not an easy value to control with so much ambient light around the room.

So I decided on using RGB values for a single pixel to play the different sounds. I created a synthesizer to when the red value for that pixel was higher than blue or green. Another synthesizer that plays when green is the most dominant, and another one for blue. I tried to use the patch that detects movement to change the frequency values of the synthesizers, but couldn’t get it to work with the signals being created by the “cycle~” object. Even though I did not incorporate many of the computer vision functions we saw in different patches, I was able to get some interesting sounds using different colors on my shirt. Fortunately I had red, green and blue parts on my shirt. I also created an interesting drum loop with an odd time signature, and some alternating down beat sounds. I also tried to use an envelope object for my synthesizers, but again, couldn’t figure out how it worked with an incoming signal.

Here is a video of me playing around with the patch:

The pixel is selected by clicking on the camera feed

5 Comments Add yours

  1. Tom Towadros says:

    I like how you were able to get a variety of sounds into a single rhythm. I can see potential for a bigger project here, and I’m sure you had some ambitious ideas. Like you mentioned in class, I wish there was a visual element to this, as well as something that ties the audio together (maybe a backing track or steady tone in the background).

  2. Colin Ancalmo says:

    This is a cool concept for making music, and the percussion progression helps to keep the sound from becoming stagnant.

  3. Joy Tartaglia says:

    This is an interesting idea. I imagine it can be easily built upon with more tracking pixels for more variety or more complex musical patterns.

  4. Daniel McDonough says:

    This is an interesting idea. The sounds of music were well tuned and chosen very carefully. I would love to hear how the music would play if the camera was constantly rotating.

  5. Sylvia Lin says:

    You are able to turn every thing into a drum machine LOL! As I commented in class, I think it would be interesting if the user has some sort of way to control the beat or pace of the rhythm. The music effect is very nice designed though, it doesn’t not sound disjointed at all. It is a bummer that this is highly dependent on your shirt color, meaning it can’t be triggered perfectly every time. Have you thought about using some other CV patcher to avoid this issue?

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