System of a Sound

Project Details

Designing the Visual Interface

I joined the project to help design and implement the visual components of the work. Working with researchers and artists, I prototyped, iterated, and built the display interface for users to interact with, understand the data, and contribute to the music. The design evolved from circular displays to a horizontal arrangement inspired by the Pace Layers diagram, with each layer moving at speeds corresponding to its 'pace' in the world.

Design mockup using AI-generated text descriptions for each data layer

Creating Interactive String Dynamics

For the interactive element, I designed a system inspired by guitar strings. The lower lines are thicker, playing lower notes and vibrating longer, while thinner strings play higher notes and quickly stop vibrating, matching each layer's 'pace'. I created the interaction and animation for the strings in p5.js, designing string dynamics that simulated physical plucking using a combination of Gaussian distributions and sine waves.

Isolated version of one of the strings – drag through to explore the dynamics.

Connecting Data to Emotion Through Music

The final piece was displayed within a fabric dome for the School of Cybernetics Launch Exhibition 'Australian Cybernetic: a Point Through Time.' System of a Sound was created as part of the Birch Research Project at the ANU School of Cybernetics, investigating people's connection to place. The intellectual core of the experience is Stewart Brand and Brian Eno's 'Pace Layers' concept, which describes the world in layers of stability. Visitors could interact with the sound-scape generated from data sources around them, creating music through movement. For accessibility and robustness, I developed both camera-based gesture tracking and mouse-only interaction modes.