Drawn in 1932 by E. Simms Campbell, this map describes the late night entertainment options available in Harlem in the early 30′s, with a special emphasis on music. Even though the map itself is loosely organized around the city blocks of Lenox and Seventh, the illustrations of musical style are not necessarily constrained by exact geographic location. The map goes to great lengths to express the culture of the Harlem music club scene; from the performers, to the dress, to the dancing, to the lingo, and even to the food. It’s a fantastic way to get a sense of the music for that neighborhood at that point in time, but more importantly to get a sense of the culture surrounding it. The full resolution version is available here.
Metasyn is an interface that allows visitors to explore the collection of contemporary art in Roskiilde. The visualization includes an interactive 3D browser that is among the best I’ve seen. Items are organized in the space as follows:
The objects are lined up vertically by year showing the distribution of objects over time. For a given object, its vertical order is a product of the ‘grade of dominance’ that the related artist has. The objects that are made by artists whose objects are commonly accruing in the collection are placed closer to the ground plane. This results in an organisation where the most dominant artists are represented close to ‘the core’ of the structure, while the less known artists ends up in the periphery. This decision was made to support the impression of exploring the unknown in the outer areas of the collection, and to increase chances additionally that the museum’s choice of popular artists are promoted.
If you’re interested in the other tube map based rock maps, you can check out Dorian Lynskey’s map for sale at the London Transport Museum Shop (I think Paul had that one on his wall at some point.) Also worth checking out is the Last.fm tube tags project that was covered here previously.
Ward Shelley works as an artist in Brooklyn, New York. He specializes in large projects that freely mix sculpture and performance. Utilizing eclectic influences and a variety of media, Shelley’s installations defy classification. Over the last five years, Shelley has concentrated on bizarre functioning architectural pieces in which he lives and works during the exhibition monitored with live surveillance video equipment.
Shelley also works on a series of diagramatic paintings, timelines of art-related subjects such as the careers of artists working in de-materialized media and the history of art scenes. The best known of these is the Williamsburg Timeline Drawing and Downtown Body, recently published in Bomb Magazine.
He also has a great infographic of various rock genres:
In fact, he has a number of wonderfully realized visualizations covering various art figures and movements from Andy Warhol to Avant Garde. You can access and view the entire list from this page.
These visualizations are part of an extensive study of the music of the Beatles. Many of the diagrams and charts are based on secondary sources, including but not limited to sales statistics, biographies, recording session notes, sheet music, and raw audio readings
Eventually, Michael intends to produce a book of these charts, and has a placeholder website that should have more details once they’re available.
There’s also an extensive collection of pictures available on his Flickr group.
The popularization of electronic instruments and computers, allied to the broad and easy reachable information through the internet, enabled the appearance of countless rhythmic structures, giving rise to new styles and sub styles within contemporary electronic music.
Created in Processing, SyncLost is a multi-user immersive installation on the history of electronic music. The project’s objective is to create an interface where users can view all the connections between the main styles of electronic music through visual and audible feedback.
When you click on a particular node, all connections are shown – where the style comes from and which had been influenced by it – furthermore the music plays and a representative textual information is displayed. The visual feedback is given in real time, according to the user’s choice. The music rhythm serves as a visualization parameter of the style’s icon, creating multiple sonorous visualizations. You control the visualization through wiimote controls, while audible feedback is given through wireless headphones.
Music on the Spiral Array . Real-Time (MuSA.RT) explores the use of Chew’s Spiral Array model in real-time analysis and scientific visualization of tonal structures in music.
Tone-based music consists of sequential arrangements of notes that generate pitch structures over time. An expert listener is able to ascertain these structures over time. MuSA.RT allows listeners to see tonal structures as they hear them. Real-time tracking of tonal patterns in music also has widespread applications in music analysis, information retrieval, performance analysis, and expression synthesis.
MuSA.RT shows the names of the pitches played, the triads, and the keys, as the music unfolds in a performance. The structures are visualized and computed using the three-dimensional Spiral Array model. Two trackers, called Centers of Effect (CEs), one for longterm and one for shortterm information, show the history of the tonal trajectories.
The three-dimensional model dances to the rhythm of the music, spinning smoothly so that the current triad forms the background for the CE trails. The real-time MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) input can be captured from an acoustic piano through a Moog piano bar.
MuSA.RT was designed using François’ Software Architecture for Immersipresence, a general formalism for the design, analysis and implementation of complex and interactive software systems.
The graph above plots tempi in the first movement, in terms of average beats per minute; the fastest is Hermann Scherchen, at 174.58, and the slowest is Otto Klemperer, in 1970, at 110.74.
Hot of the presses, here are the sides for the tutorial that Justin and Paul are presenting at ISMIR 2009 on October 26.
Note that the live presentation will include many demonstrations and videos of visualizations that just are not practical to include in a PDF. If you have the chance, be sure to check out the tutorial at ISMIR in Kobe on the 26th.
