Ripple
Yige Wang
While your pet plant is photogenic for instagram pictures, have you thought about making music with them? Ripple is a mobile app that can bring your relationship with nature to a new level. Natural elements like flower and leafs encompass beautifully complex geometries, and Ripple is the music box that generates a musical melody based on that geometry.
With the app, the user can snap a picture of a plant and Ripple will outline and transform it into a set of values based on the distance between the edge and the centre. An algorithm then applies these values to corresponding music notes. As the flower slowly turns like a vinyl disc, a sound will be trigged when a “needle” touches the plant. To encourage creativity, the user can also access a built-in sound library, and even customize the turning speed, frequency, and chorus. Each plant or flower then becomes an instrument that makes fun and unique music. Multiple shapes may also be combined to create multi-track creations that juxtapose sound and rhythm. Ripple aims to give access to music creation to professionals, amateur musicians, and those with little musical knowledge. Intuitive tools and icons allow the user to create with fast and easy steps.
Ripple is my way of pursuing whimsicality and beauty of the uncontrollable nature in this anthropocene era where all things are manipulated or controlled by human intervention.