Leander: Navigating Musical Possibility Space Through Color Data Sonification

Abstract

Leander is an experimental film that sonifies color data to generate its musical soundtrack. The colors of Lake Michigan, captured in time lapse video, constitute ever-changing probability vectors that govern the behavior of musical sound-events over time. This stochastic, or probabilistic approach to data sonification imagines the musical experience as movement through a virtual possibility space, rather than the end result of a causal process. This pictorial describes how color data guides the various musical parameters at play in Leander through weighted chance.