Audiomata is a web app that generates music based off the behavior of cellular automata. Think of it as a cross between a checkerboard and a set of digital wind chimes.
Touch a square to activate it.
TouchPlay to set active squares in motion.
When an active square collides with the left or right side, a tone will sound. Also, the active square will reverse direction, and begin to proceed the opposite way.
TouchPause to suspend the motion of active squares.
Touch a square again to change its orientation -- or touch an upward-oriented square to make it inactive.
Multiple squares can be in active at the same time. Touch more to make them active.
When active squares collide with each other, their orientation may change!
When an active square collides with the top or bottom, no tone is triggered, but it changes which tones are triggered when active squares hit the sides.
Hit clear to make all currently active squares inactive.
Touchlink to generate a link to your current active composition
Known Issues: for at least some users of Firefox on iOS, no sound is produced. Mobile Safari should work back through at least iOS 12 (though you *may* need to check your mute switch). There are no other known issues for browsers supporting the web audio api; please feel free to reach out if you discover any.
Why? There's plenty of other "tone grid" sequencers out there to play with, most using a single pentatonic scale to make sure there aren't "wrong" notes, and they can be fun! However, they tend towards aesthetics that are (*ahem*) minimalist, to be charitable, and some might use the term "repetitive." By allowing the scales utilized by the tone grid to vary with the behavior of the automata, we introduce the possibility of greater variety, though in this implementation at the risk of some potentially jarring tone combinations, and whether the potential of variety is realized is *highly* dependent on the sophistication of the automata setup.