Mapping and Visualization with SuperCollider

Create interactive and responsive audio-visual applications with SuperCollider

Overview

• Master 2D computer-generated graphics and animation
• Perform complex encodings and audio/data analysis
• Implement intelligent generative audio-visual systems

In Detail

SuperCollider is an environment and programming language used by musicians, scientists, and artists who work with audio-files SuperCollider has built-in graphical features which are used in conjunction with the sound synthesis server to create audio-visual mapping and sound visualization. If you wish to create data visualizations by acquiring data from audio and visual sources, then this book is for you.

Digital sound artists need to analyze, manipulate, map, and visualize data when working on a scientific or an artistic project. As an artist, this book, by means of its numerous code examples will provide you with the necessary knowledge of SuperCollider's practical applications, so that you can extract meaningful information from audio-files and master its visualization techniques. This book will help you to prototype and implement sophisticated visualizers, sonifiers, and complex mappings of your data.

This book takes a closer look at SuperCollider features such as plotting and metering functionality to dispel the mysterious aura surrounding the more advanced mappings and animation strategies. This book also takes you through a number of examples that help you to create intelligent mapping and visualization systems. Throughout the course of the book, you will synthesize and optimize waveforms and spectra for scoping as well as extract information from an audio signal. The later sections of the book focus on advanced topics such as emulating physical forces, designing kinematic structures, and using neural networks to enable you to develop a visualization that has a natural motion with structures that respect anatomy and which come with an intelligent encoding mechanism. This book will teach you everything you need to work with intelligent audio-visual systems to extract and visualize audio-visual data.

What you will learn from this book

• Use the built-in plotting, scoping, and metering functionality
• Synthesize efficient waveforms and spectra
• Extract information from audio signals
• Implement sophisticated encodings using interpolation, logic, and neural networks
• Execute imaginative visualizers
• Instrument sophisticated audio-visual generative systems
• Finalize and organize complicated projects
• Acquire data from local or remote sources including third party software and hardware
• Design and animate complex visual structures such as fractals, particle systems, and kinematic creatures

Approach

This book is a standard guide with numerous code examples of practical applications. It will help you advance your skills in creating sophisticated visualizations while working with audio-visual systems.

Who this book is written for

This book is ideal for digital artists and sound artists who are familiar with SuperCollider and who wish to expand their technical and practical knowledge of mapping and visualization. It is assumed that you already have some experience with the SuperCollider programming language and are familiar with the fundamental audio synthesis techniques.

Marinos Koutsomichalis

Marinos Koutsomichalis (Athens, 1981) is an artist and scholar working with sound and a wide range of other media. His artistic work interrogates the specifics of site, perception, technology, and material. His academic interests include computer programming, generative art, new aesthetics, and environmental sound and noise. He has widely performed, exhibited, and lectured internationally and has held residencies in miscellaneous research centers and institutions. He has an MA by research in composition with digital media by the University of York and, as of writing, he is a candidate PhD in Music, Sound, and Media Art at the De Montfort University. He is in the board of the Contemporary Music Research Center (KSYME-CMRC) and also the director of its class of Electronic Music and Sound Synthesis. As of writing, he is a research fellow in the University of Turin.