Transcode

Summary:

Collaboration between Tanner Cook (visual) & Marcus D’Camp (audio/programming)
Tittle: trans·code /ˌtransˈkōd/: digital-to-digital data conversion of one encoding to another. Physical CDs are used to produce a time based image. Subsequent images are transcoded to digital audio signal based on RGBA data.

Detail:

Transcode was a collaboration between Tanner Cook of UCSD’s Visual Art Department and myself. Tanner was experimenting with capturing images of CDs on a flatbed scanner while moving during the process of scanning. This lead to a series of videos of light shown through CDs. We decided to explore the notion of CDs as a representation of audio. Using the visual programming language Pure Data by Miller Puckette of UCSD’s Music Department I was able to separate the videos RGB data values and in a sense transcode these to audio through means of synthesis.

Links:

Video of Transcode

Downloadable Application (Mac only)

Pure Data Patch (Cross Platform, Requires Pd Extended)