meredith lynn morrison

Computers Love Flourishes: A Collaboration with Alex Braidwood
Performative Sound Installation with Ink on Paper Drawings

This piece was initially created for the Long Beach SoundWalk. The drawing controls the sound. A webcam captures the drawing underneath it with only a slight time delay. The computer interprets the marks on the paper as plotted coordinates that trigger sounds.

The formal language came from a series of studies into how the application (and subsequent sound) would respond to certain marks. The information being processed disregards any form of tonal range or color. Straight lines were averaging out to a single point, as were large fields of black. To get the richest sonic experience, elements needed to be line-based, of a certain thickness, rounded or arcked, with alternations of both positive and negative space (shown above: vernacular development; the performance; and the finished drawings).

More about the collaboration here.