cellular patterns
Concept
Often, plants and organisms are built from repeating patterns. But also processes tend to function in patterns such as the transport of nutrients or movements while growing.
These patterns are used to generate rhythms, and combining these create organic growing / evolving soundscape.
Technical Solution
The organism gets observed through a microscope and the recorded live image gets processed.
Image processing is done in multiple steps. Firstly, the feed from the camera is turned in a grayscale image and additionally into a pure black and white image using a threshold. This monochromatic image is additionally broken down into a 5 by 5 matrix. By comparing these matrices to a pre defined set of "rules" patterns can be matched and used as trigges and control data for the sonification.
The data gets processed in Max/MSP. Max is either used for sonification in a mono or stereo image.
Aesthetic outcome
The outcome of this an installation where the viewer can observe the plants and organisms and listen to the sonification.
References / Research Material
- [Cellular automaton - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton)
- [Cellular Automaton](https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CellularAutomaton.html)
- Rhythms and Morphogenesis - PETER W. BARLOW AND JACQUELINE LÜCK
- [Acoustic and magnetic communication in plants](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/psb.21517?scroll=top&needAccess=true)