The Future of Sonification and Limitations of Our Project
There are limitations to what we could achieve with this project, espeically given the time constraints. However, were we to continue working on this project there are multiple avenues which would be interesting to explore next!
Limitations
Importance of Authorship
The interpretation of both Art and Music is inherantly linked to an individuals personal experiences and tastes. The emotions or story that one person creates can be completely different from the person stood next to them. Because of this there is a limit as to how well our code could ever work.
To try and get around this, we created a "User Interface" for the code, which allows the user to choose:
- 4 Instruments (Melody, CounterMelody, Harmony, and Bass)
- Key Signature
- Tempo
- Style (Classical or Cinematic)
- Number of Slices
- Effects/No Effects
By doing this we hoped to bring back some level of personal interpretation. However there is only so much that a computer can do. Human creativity is so crucial to emotional interpretation.
Monochrome Images
Another limitation we faced is that the code struggles with very white, grey, or black dominant images. In particular these images resulted in interupted cadences and very simplistic musical outputs.
Given the sheer amount of monochrome modern art, this is something that the software should ideally be able to compensate for.
Group Experiences
One limitation stems from our own experience. As a group of western classically trained musicians, we focused in on more standard orchestral instruments and styles. This makes the outputs more similar to eachother than we would have liked.
Where to go next
Content of the Image
It would be interesting to find a way to incorporate the actual content of the image into the musical output. Currently this is only really achievable through the choice of instruments and the recommendations that we are able to make based on past research.
Complexity in the Harmony
Currently the Harmony and Bass parts have one simplistic rhythm which repeats every bar. It would be interesting to consider a different aspect of the inputted image which could generate more rhythmically complex parts.
Incorporation of Other Styles
Our code is currently limited to more standard western orchestral styles of musical output. It would be fascinating to learn what makes other styles sound the way they do and to incorporate that into the project. In particular to find a way to generate a drum and/or bass line from the image which would then open up the project into Pop, Jazz, Rock, Metal etc.