Chango: Make Music from Light and Motion

By Brandon Lucia 2010-2011

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The Chango is a music creation tool. The original Chango converts the position of your mouse in 2D space into a harmony. I prefer to describe the mapping between position and harmony as taking the "spectrum" of the current position field surrounding the cursor. Continuously varying the position of your mouse continuously varies the harmony created. You can read more about the Chango here.

PhotoChango is another take on the Chango idea. In PhotoChango, your computer's camera captures video. Using computer vision techniques, the PhotoChango takes the audio spectrum of each image, and computes and renders a resulting harmony. The PhotoChango can convert light or motion, or both simultaneously into harmony. The key behind it is that the image is partitioned in 2D, and each partition has an associated frequency. The intensity of the light, or the vigor of the motion in a partition of the image determines the amplitude of the frequency associated with that partition. When both light and motion are considered together, motion dictates frequency, and light dictates amplitude. The PhotoChango is a real-world synthesizer that can be played by moving your body or by moving lights in your environment.

Releases

Download the Mac Release of PhotoChango Here!

Download PhotoChango for Android Here!

Download the Latest Source Release of PhotoChango Here!

Download the Mouse Driven Chango Here!

Recordings

Listen to 'No Air' a performance for Chango that debuted at The Racer Sessions in 2010.

Listen to my second Racer Session, performed on the PhotoChango.

Listen to Elevenogram by King Tears Bat Trip, featuring the Chango.

PhotoChango Demo Videos

This is a video captured while using the PhotoChango, and demonstrates how it converts motion into structured harmony.

This shorter video more clearly shows the spatial division between different pitches.

This demo of the PhotoChango being projected in my lab (sorry for the low-quality video). Note that the upper left hand corner of the screen produces low frequencies, and the lower right hand corner produces high frequencies. Also, notice that when I stop moving, I seem to disappear, and the audio goes silent.