Published on Jan 2, 2019 Pit Przygodda
Kind of a modern day ANS, or Oramics. Also see Virtual ANS for iOS.
"silhouette". A video-to-audio-synthesizer by Pit Przygodda (Prototype 2018).
Infos: www.silhouette-synthesizer.de
6-voice, seperate tuning and modulation, analog-filter, FX. SILHOUETTE trains itself to become a really extraordinary sound-scape-machine!
Technique
s i l h o u e t t e is a software-based synthesizer, that creates sound by using greyscale-data chosen from a picture file.
This is done in real-time.
At the moment, it is programmed under the Pure Data programming environment.
Data-sources:
- real-time-pictures/motion-pictures (camera)
- picture-files
- motion-pictures (films)
Oscillator:
The sound is produced by transforming an area of greyscale-data into sound-data.
Windows:
You have a screen, where you see the camera-picture/picture/film you have loaded in.
You have 2 data-windows within the loaded picture to chose a visual area where you like to extract sound-data.
The 2 windows can be changed in size and position individualy and be modulated by LFO, EG, KBD-follow, audio-waveform or manually in realtime.
Their audio-output is routed anolog to their x/y-position in the picture to coordinates in a quadrophonic sound-system in the performance-room.
Silhouette
So it is possible that the outline of a silhouette is analog to your audio-waveform.
Therefor it is necessary that the silhouette-shape is strictly black and white.
This was the main idea at the beginning of this project:
That you act visually directly IN the waveform.
This is done very sensually by acting on the light-table in front of the camera.
I think about giving that technique a name: "silhouette-synthesis".
Quadrophonia
Since summer 2018 I am building a hardware. It has 2 joystick-controlled-data-windows inside the main-screen which let you move 2 audio-waves analog to their coordinates in the main-wondow inside a quadrophonic space (screen corner-left/top > speaker-front/left; screen corner-right/bottom > speaker back/right etc.).
Silhouette seems like a long row to hoe when there is modern software that already does the job. Rasmus Elkund's Coagula for example. There is Virtual ANS for Windows, too. Image Line's Harmor can convert graphic to sound. You could even add a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse to manipulate orientation easily. Designing and building Silhouette must have been interesting, though.
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