Magic Pixie

Years ago I made a little program for Max/MSP as part of my undergraduate degree that uses an image as a score and "plays" it pixel by pixel and feeds the data into a synthesis engine. It was fun to make and use, and I played it at the end of year performance that year. The patch was worth it because as a result a got a permanent exhibition at the (now deceased) Science and Technology Investigator Centre as well as a workshop presentation in Michael Yuen's Project 2 sonic art event.

Today I have revisited this idea with a "new" version of the patch. The images above are "Mandala 10" and "Mandala 11" by the 8bitcollective.com user Campbell. These images were used as data sources in two of my 30 Songs in 30 Days.

This version of Magic Pixie reads a picture in blocks of 4 x 4 pixels, starting in the top left hand corner of the image and working down and right in collumns. Each pixel is stripped down to its RGB components. These values are scaled and fed to Live as MIDI data. Each of the four collumns that are read at a given point in time represents a voice that has a Sega Master System sample loaded into an instance of the Simpler sampling plugin.

Below is the list of MIDI mappings in Live. Naturally, the data could have been used to control an actual Sega Master System, but I do not have one with me today unfortunately.