This project is called resonance. The wall you see here is only one way of how this structure can look like and there are millions more. I was inspired by a talk about a robot arm, that is moved by software and triggered by music from a violin, cutting out a shape made out of wax.

The use of music as definition that alternates space and time was an interesting thought. So I grabbed my non-existent processing skills and started working on a script that reads out the frequency of a song and stores the values in a file.

import ddf.minim.*;
import ddf.minim.analysis.*;

Minim minim;
AudioPlayer song;
FFT fft;
PrintWriter output;

void setup()
size(1024, 100);

minim = new Minim(this);

song = minim.loadFile(“file.mp3”, 1024);;


output = createWriter(“test.txt”);

void draw()

for(int i = 0; i < song.mix.size() – 1; i++)
line(i, 50 + song.mix.get(i)*50, i+1, 50 + song.mix.get(i+1)*50);
float x = song.mix.get(i)*50;

void stop()




This file is being read by grasshopper which is a plug-in for rhino. The values are interpreted as coordinates and then altered with a variety of sliders to optimize the results. Between the points lines are generated. These lines are also editable through some simplifying algorithms. The lines are copied and moved and finally lofted.
This is done twice. The first time in horizontal direction the second time in vertical direction. Finally these two shapes are booled.

The next part of the list is used to generate a plane, which in the end cuts off the peaks of the solid. There is a bunch of sliders and parameters that control the curvature and form of the plane. In the end, the solids backside is cut off. Here I used a similar pattern to generate the intersection.

So we end up with a shape, that is completely generated out of one single song. If we put in another track we end up with something radically different.

So with the song being the one relevant factor that forms the appearance of the wall, what will happen if we confront it with the song again. An array of speakers is aimed at the wall. The sound-waves will bounce off the wall getting distracted, diffused, amplified and thus are changed through the materialized structure of their own embodied rules.

Creating a space that is totally public but where every person has its own intimate moment of listening to a sound that is as unique as the architecture it creates.

2 comments on “resonance”

  1. denjell says:

    sweet. i want one of these walls!!! want to produce one for the artists’ house?

  2. kautzz says:

    wow, that’d be great!

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