Computer Music is an audio-visual installation that visualizes and sonifies computer processes.
The sonic component of the work is a mapping of the amount of memory used by and running time of the 100 most recent system processes onto the range of human hearing.
The visual component of the work takes the same data and displays it horizontally as a sequence of bars (with most recent processes on the left). Older and larger processes are displayed as brighter colors.
The installation is “performed” by the opening and closing of programs on the computer, with or without the intervention of a human user.
The goal of this work is two-fold: first, to bring the usually “silent”, backgrounded, computer processes people interact with everyday into a very perceptible, foregrounded, domain, and secondly, to do this in a way that reveals the beauty of these processes and how computer systems handle them.
maxmsp/jitter