Sunday, August 23, 2009

Sonifying Conway's Game of Life

Every cell (pixel) in the playing field controls an oscillator. When a cell is alive (coloured), the oscillator turns on. When it is dead (black), the oscillator turns off. A cell's position from left to right will determine its position in the stereo field. A cell's position from top to bottom will determine its frequency (pitch) with a bit of randomness thrown in for good measure. As the playing field reaches a more complex state with more and more living cells, the cpu load increases dramatically, as the audio is being output in real time. The size of the playing field is 100 pixels by 100 pixels.

If you're interested in the Max/MSP patch, first of all install my Game of Life Max/MSP object, and then download the patch here.




7 comments:

REI_ said...

private video =(

Tim said...

I can't watch the video, because it is private.

Sebastian Tomczak said...

Sorry guys, not sure how that happened, but it's set to public now :)

Anonymous said...

http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2006-08/041323.html

Charlie Williams said...

This is great! Sounds really cool. The addition I'd like to make to the sonification is to have the volume of a frequency band gradually reduce, the longer a group of cells stays in that region... something like "aging" over many generations. (This to avoid the inevitable cloud of hanging flashers and blinkers that cloud up most of Conway's petri dishes eventually)

If anyone's had that idea, or has a brilliant plan for it, want to post? I have to brilliant idea and am planning to just muck about till I find something.

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