Fibonacci week - 3/4: the whitney files

Here is the second minute in the Fibonacci series. The third requirement for this week's minutes states:

The Fibonacci sequence gives rise to some of the most beautiful forms in nature - requirement 3 is that our minutes attempt to convey some of that same beauty. Grace & elegance are our watchwords here [...]

Now i thought about this for a while and it occured to me that when we think of beauty in nature we often think of static, mathematical, graceful and elegant structures such as the one Jeff posted earlier this week. When i think of nature though i think of a primal force violently forging connections and ripping them apart again. Things are in a state of perpetual change - creation and disintegration. We live in a world of conflict and struggle. This to me is the essence of nature.

In a way my minute is an attempt to portray that chaotic struggle. I had the formation of rocks in mind: minerals crystallizing from magma at temperatures between 600Cº and 1200Cº, and from the surface to depths of 30 kilometres or more. Extrusive rocks resulting from magma reaching the surface either as lava or fragmental ejecta. My minute portrays how matter can explosively combine leaving a bang and how it can slowly disintegrate again after that.

To evoke such a complex thought i felt i had to do something a little different today. Instead of doing an ordenary musical minute i worked on an audio-visual minute. The inversion of John Whitney's ideas concerning music and animation that Jim Bumgardner came up with suited my purpose well. You can find his awesome implemented flash version here.

Whitney was particularly interested in converting musical ideas into animation. He made a number of films based around the simple idea of harmonic relationships. Here's an apt quote from the man himself i found on Bumgardner's site:

An early intuition about how to control total dynamics led me to activate all graphic elements through a motion function that advances each element differentially. For example, if one element were set to move at a given rate, the next element might be moved at two times that rate. Then the third would move at three times that rate and so on. Each element would move at a different rate and in a different direction within the field of action. So long as all elements obey a rule of direction and rate, and none drifts aimlessly or randomly, then pattern configurations form and reform. This is harmonic resonance, and it echoes musical harmony, stated in explicit terms. I tried this procedure in several films, and was gratified by the consistency of the confirmation it demonstrated.
– John Whitney, “Digital Harmony”, pp. 38

Following Bumgardner i replaced graphical elements with musical elements and worked out a patch that would assign a triggering frequency to the base element and then a frequency to every other element which is a multiple of the base frequency. Because today's fibonacci number is 3 i used only multiples of three. This particular configuration leads to some really interesting patterns. How the elements combine and fall apart in an ordered yet chaotic fashion - at least to me - resonates with my earlier thoughts.

Each element gets it's own pitch-sequence, a random generated amplitude within a defined range and an envelope. These parameters are used to control a sine-oscillator. The audio of the oscillators combined is fed into an echo/delay effect.

Simultaneously these parameters are being fed into a display unit. There is a graphical element for each musical element. Each graphical element follows a given trajectory with a set speed. When they cross the starting line they trigger their corresponding note. The caterpillar movement of the elements is my own little design.

To record it i used one of those nifty programs they have nowadays that allow you to record anything happening on your computer screen. I have had a hard time striking a balance between size and quality. I ended up with a file of 8 mb but the quality is pretty bad. If i find out how i'll upload a better one.

Let me end on one last thought. Rocks and their formation may seem pretty static to us. But that is merely because we humans are simply too small and we live too short a life to appreciate the immense forces that are at play here. To really appreciate it you must behold it from afar and live a million years. Blinking your eyes should last a century. This minute even though it's just a minute actually represents vasts and vasts amounts of time. Remember that when you listen to it ;-)

Well without further ado i present you the Fibonacci minute #2: