Design

bzzzbz

Audiovisuals: context overview

• Since several open-source products are available to create music with (Ardour, PureData), you might already be thinking about performing them live, which could well benefit from accompanying visuals. Unfortunately analog video-synths are !very! expensive (LZX) and require quite some time to get started with. Developing an open-source digital video-synth, however, could enable audio-visual artists to enhance their live acts with minimal investment and effort.
• Relying on programmed visuals allows users to save their patches and easily modify them while also facilitating the implementation of additional creative mapping algorythms such as neural networks and other experimental generative algorythms.

Requirement analysis

Use-cases

As a performer I want to express myself in the best way possible: Routing different control signals to the hardware allows for expressive control over audio and video. (Creating a filtersweep on a hand movement, glitchy visuals on the kick classics)

As a musician I want to experiment with the interaction of audio visuals: Finding meaningful mappings between audio and visuals is not easy. Providing the tools and the environment to create mappings, however, leaves a lot of space for experiments allowing each user to go as deep as they wish...

Functional and non-functional requirements

A digital audio-reactive video synth needs to meet the following functional requirements:

• acquire audio data coming from a jack cable
• map the audio data in a meaningful way to visual parameters (we used FFT in our first release)
• acquire signals from the control surface that are mapped to visual parameters

While these criteria are essential the product also has to be portable, easy to set up and compact which satisfies the non-functional requirements.

bzzzbz design objectives

We want to provide different mappings with adjustable parameters that can be modified by an expressive control surface to enhance a live audio-visual performance.