Through May 7, 2012, that art is on display in the rotunda of the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library in the form of three flat-screen displays. Students in the “Programming Music, Performing Computers: Introduction to Computer Music and Aesthetics” First Year Experience Learning Community created “Visual Soundscapes,” in which they selected beautiful or compelling images and then converted them to sound through computer programming.

“Students were free to select different parts of the image for specific musical functions,” says computer science professor Bill Manaris.  “Not all parts of the images were necessarily sonified, yet most of the sound came from pixels inside these images.  In the end, visual, musical, and algorithmic processes became intimately intertwined.”

The exhibit features the student’s projects on a flat screen TV with attached headphones. Most images are displayed with a moving red line.  This line approximates the location in the image that’s generating sound at that  particular moment.  The red line also  offers a timeline of the piece.  Some of the images are animated, unfolding or developing in real time with the music.

Inspiration and models were drawn from musical traditions such as Minimalism, Jazz, Rock, Serialism, and Aleatory Music. The musical parameters included pitch and scale, dynamics, timbre, and instrumentation. “Students had to understand the techniques that characterize different musical styles or languages. For instance, several students modeled their works after the minimalist composer Arvo Pärt.  As a result, they learned how such music is constructed,” says music professor Blake Stevens.

This learning community, a funnel to the Computing in the Arts major, is a six-credit course co-taught by Manaris and Stevens. When this course was offered in 2010, students performed a laptop orchestra as part of their final project.

“That’s the beauty of this course – it’s a very creative space,” Manaris says. “This semester, the learning environment (students, questions, ideas, exploration of topics) directed us toward this as a final project. When this learning community is offered in the fall, we may do something completely different.”

The student exhibition is coordinated by studio art professor, Jarod Charzewski.

This work has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Computing in the Arts is an integrated program in the sciences and arts at the College of Charleston.  The program is an interdisciplinary B.A. degree offered by the Department of Computer Science in the School of Science and Mathematics along with the Departments of Art History, Music, Studio Art, and Theatre in the School of the Arts.

The First-Year Experience at the College of Charleston is designed to assist new students with their transition to college and provide them with skills that help them succeed throughout their academic careers.

For more information about “Visual Soundscapes,” contact Bill Manaris at ManarisB@cofc.edu.