Organization of "The World"
I’m gonna be up front about this, I named this patch “The World” after Dio’s Stand from Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure. Not that it has anything to do with that show, I just like exclaiming “THE WORLD!” sometimes to myself. And, to me this patch was supposed to include all my favorite aspects of nature and have an interplay between the real world and the environment I’ve created. Because of the idea, the patch will need to be massive (like the literal Earth, or The Beeg Yoshi), and complicated in ways that might lose sense to me as I create it (as a single creator would probably do while making something so complex). As this fact became aware to me, I felt the need to leave extensive comments within The World, explaining its inner workings, as well as create blog posts whenever I make significant improvements.
I’ve already made a good amount of progress in creating it, so my first posts will go between explaining what’s already there and showing newly developed sections. In this post, I want to go deeper into the organization of the patch and my ideology on optimizing it as it increases in size.
I also don’t know when or where I should mention this, but I am also using ircam’s Spat v3 to spatialize the audio Binaurally at the moment. The full plan is to turn this into a multi-channel installation. But I am currently hooking up some items to spatializers. I’m still thinking about how I could do this in the most optimized way.
organizational ideology
This patch is going to be giant, so it needs to be set up in a way that is; A) easily expandable and adaptable to the changes in the environment around it, & B) set up in a way that only the parts that are being used are activated, nothing that’s not currently generating data or creating output should be idly taking up CPU and RAM space.
To achieve this, I first use lots of abstractions as a means to organize the patch with a file system in finder. This way, to edit a section, I won’t have to open the entire patch every time. I can work on a small idea, and then insert it into the patch where it makes locational sense and then set up the pathways for it to receive the data it needs. I also make extensive use of the poly~ object for expandability and optimization purposes. Its ability to scale and turn voices completely off is a huge help.
The patch exists within the “Main World” patch. Within this patch are the current five sections. The Brain, The Birds, Seasonal Weather, Insects, & the Mixer.
the current sections
The Brain
View of the outlets on the Weather Checker Patch (within the main outer world patch)
One of main sources of data for this patch (and definitely the biggest) is called the Weather Checker patch. This patch includes an API through Open Weather Map that receives a ton of accurate, up-to-date weather information on the current location. The information I’ve decided I might want to use is as follows:
Current Temperature, Daily High, Daily Low, Humidity, Wind Speed, Cloud Coverage, Sunrise Time, Sunset Time, Month, Day, Year, Hour, Minute, Second, Latitude, Longitude, & Is it Raining?
Birds
Just outside of the birds patch (within the main outer world patch)
Birds are practically everywhere. We all think they’re interesting, and some of us might think they’re super cute - that’s me. A close friend of mine got me into birding late in life and since then, I’ve developed a deep fondness for their twitchy movements and quirky behaviors. Part of our birding experience was to use Cornell’s eBird database to log the birds we were spotting. I found out last year that Cornell has an API for this database that can retrieve something like the 50 most recent birds spotted in a radius to your location. My idea was to turn that data into music.
Seasonal Weather ambience
The top view of the Seasonal Weather Patches; Spring and Summer (within the main outer world patch)
The weather data is mostly used within these abstractions. Each one will at least feature sounds for Clouds, Moon, Sun, Sunrise, Sunset, Moonrise, Moonset, & Rain. At the current moment, spring is more done, I’ve been working on summer over the past couple of months. It’s hard to keep adding parts to it sometimes, but I’m determined to finish this patch, even if it takes years. I honestly really love long term projects like this. Just being able to chip away at something that feels unfinshable. And as I change, the parts of it get created in entirely new and interesting ways. I can go back to parts of and and either remember exactly how I felt the day I made it, or have forgotten making it entirely. This is a similar mentality I have for creating the Special Edition Rescores, which each take around 3-5 months of passive work.
Insects
The outer form of the “Insect World” patch (within the main outer world patch)
Insects are kind of natures underdog. Tiny but respectively strong for their size and massive in numbers. This has been a section of the patch that I am still brainstorming on how I want it to sound/look. Right now it’s called the “Insect World” abstraction.
The current concept is to have a blend of field recordings I’ve collected over the years of massive amounts of singing insects and synthesized insect sounds that are spatialized around the listener that either blend in almost completely, or stick out in a really surreal kind of way. I’m still trying to determine what weather/season criteria will need to be met for certain insects to play over others. Right now, I’ve got a patch that plays cricket sounds at night. For now, I feel like I’m going to keep collecting insect sounds and creating instruments out of them, when I have a lot, I’ll decide how they should come into play. Thats the benefit of working with abstractions, anything can be added and taken out over and over again easily.