Music, Science and Technology Research Centre at YorNight 2020

This interface works best on Google Chrome for laptop/desktop, and on whatever your native browser is for tablet/phone (e.g., Safari for iOS).

The interface can be used to take a photo and turn darker patches into sound. You could try:

• Your face!
• Simple, thick-lined drawings on blank paper;
• Anything else with high contrasts.

Sounds vary in frequency (pitch) according to vertical position in the photo and over time according to horizontal position. This interface is an example of sonification – the general process of turning data into sound.

If you'd like to learn more about music and coding for the web, visit this page.

(This interface is a proof-of-concept hack. Apologies for any bugs, lack of style,...)

Credits

The code in this example was written by Tom Collins. Reuse of the code is welcomed, and governed by the GNU General Public License Version 3 or later. It uses code or data from the following resources.

• The idea for the poster was inspired by JeongHo Park's turning sketches into sound.
• Icons on the poster are from Freepik.
• jQuery
• Video capture and pixel manipulation are from Mozilla documentation.
• The camera flip is based on this code by Hemanth.HM.
• Audio engine uses Tone.js by Yotam Mann.