H Y P E R T R O P E is the piece I created for the final project of my MSc. It is a deliberately temperamental audio-visual sampler, built in the Unity game engine, using Pure Data patches integrated into Wwise via Heavy Compiler. The user controls the audio-visual elements via MIDI controller. There are hidden thresholds in the system, where if the user pushes too far in any one direction, all the audio visual elements will replace themselves with new items from the media pool, and the controls will randomly remap themselves, so as to resist user comprehension over time. The audio elements used are a combination of tape loops, field recordings, and more discrete sounds. The visual elements are videos taken from archive.org, and videos I shot myself.
The Pure Data patch I developed for the project was designed to play sounds backwards and forwards at any speed within Wwise, integrated via Heavy Compiler. Here is the patch I designed for this purpose:
I found that with the control mapped to linear values, the audio the system generated sounded rather… predictable, so I spent a long time iterating a Wwise RTPC curve which would vary between backwards and forwards playspeeds at fixed intervals:
The visuals work along the lines of a series of transparent zoetropes, with (several larger and smaller) boxes made of four planes facing inward around a fixed camera, each with a different video playing on each plane, and all rotating around the camera at a speed determined by the user.
As it stands, I see H Y P E R T R O P E as the beginning of a creative and conceptual journey which I will be on for a long time. I learned valuable lessons, and created intriguing content, and generated seeds from which larger ideas have taken hold and continue to develop.
I wrote a blog documenting the process as it unfolded, which can be read HERE.