Sights & Sounds of Memory Lane
Zoyah Shah
Sights and Sounds of Memory Lane explores the intersection of memory and audio through creative coding and generative design.
By visualizing the auditory elements that are attached to memories, a new way of experiencing and remembering those moments is uncovered. These visuals deepen one’s understanding of the memory and enhance one’s emotional connection to them.
Each visual is generated in Processing, using the Minim library to extract data from the audio input. Audio is loaded into the code, and used to generate a visual output by taking the frequency spectrum and amplitude to draw the image. The image is comprised of only circles, and the size and color of each one is controlled by the audio input. This project sets out to create data driven visuals that encapsulate the emotional journey of the memories associated with audio.
The visuals produced draw resemblance to the iris of an eye, a CD, a record label, genome sequence mapping, and even hard drive defragmentation. Despite all of the drastic differences from one another, they share commonalities—the archival of memory, or in this case information, and similar visual language. In Sights & Sounds of Memory Lane, audio is treated as a form of memory, and the generative visuals serve as an archive of the memory’s emotive journey.