Antonio Medina Perez
Final Video:
I love making physical, electronic musical instruments, and from the start of this class, I was excited to combine this with whatever type of AI - assisted musical chaos I could create, inspired by so much of what everyone has done this quarter.
After playing around a ton with understanding chucK, I built a Teensy 3.6 - based MIDI controller using a 20” linear soft potentiometer to act as the analog-to-discretized “string” of an electronic guitar, with 5 pushbuttons corresponding to a note in a 7 chord. From this, I expanded on the audio mosaic to create a program that recorded some audio, extracted features (gooooo Chroma!) and sliced it up based on the input from the midi guitar.
Going into this quarter, I was a bit intimidated. I’m a fan and student of music, technology, engineering, all the stuffs, but I felt like I wouldn’t be at the same level of expressiveness and artfulness as some of the folks who specialize in computer music. This class, in both the people in it, Ge, and the philosophy, discourse, discord, memes, and just everything about the energy and culture of this learning environment has not only provided a wonderful, meaningful space to learn, share, and ponder the meaning of ai and art, but also an incredible hub of open, unabashed expression, creativity, support and camaraderie. Never have I felt so open and unafraid to share work that I found fun and interesting, regardless of how ‘done’ it was (though it seems like a big takeaway is nothing may ever be considered ‘done’ in either music OR AI… maybe just, good enough for now…or at least good enough to post on youtube). Thank you Ge, and Yikai, and everyone else for making this such a fun and worthwhile experience, and one that I’m confident I’ll be thinking back to whenever I find myself wanting to think critically about my work, my art, a cocaine bear, or just about anything in life.
### Old Stuff (Milestone)
For the final project, I’m taking a look back at the fun behind the Mosaic-ing tool from Featured Artist and refining it further to eventually turn it into an interactive musical instrument, based on what you can pick up from the world (my wee-wahs or otherwise).