Assignment 4 - Creative Coding: Interactive Multimedia Experiences
Matthew McAlarney
Glitch Project: https://a4-maccode7110.glitch.me/
The goal of Sepultura Lookaway Audio Visualizer is to generate an audio visualization of the Alternative Metal/Nu Metal song Lookaway by Sepultura. Users have the ability to adjust certain parameters influencing the visual experience to tailor the appearance of the audio visualization to their desires. Users have the ability to control the type of shape being drawn as the music is playing (currently rectangles and circles are available for selection), the fill and stroke colors of the shapes being drawn, the X and Y offsets of the shadows of the generated shapes, the color of the shadows, and the amount of blur the shadows produce.
While building this application, the main challenge I faced was determining which visual appearance parameters to allow the user to control. In addition to the parameters mentioned in the paragraph above, there were a number of other parameters I was considering for user control such as audio volume, audio panning, shape generation size, rotation of generated shapes, and color gradient creation. Ultimately, I implemented a user experience allowing control of only the visual parameters mentioned in the paragraph above as I believe that those ones are the most artistically impactful and intriguing. In addition, a smaller yet equally important challenge that I faced was determining the sizes of the different shapes that can be generated. Some considerations for the sizes of the shapes I coded into the client JS file were how much of the drawing canvas I wanted the visualization to take up, and also a reasonable area proportion of fill color to stroke color for each shape.