posts research about

research

all framework project protocol

Sonic Pi — The Live Coding Music Synth ↗

project

sonic-pi.net · 2012

Live-coding environment that treats music as a programming problem: sequences, loops, concurrency, and timing
Built on SuperCollider but exposes a Ruby DSL that makes audio synthesis accessible without a signal processing background
Used in education to teach programming through immediate auditory feedback rather than visual output

SuperCollider ↗

project

supercollider.github.io · 1996

Platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition with a real-time audio server (scsynth) controlled by a client language (sclang)
Client-server architecture decouples sound generation from control logic — the audio graph runs at audio rate while patterns and scheduling run at control rate
The foundation that Sonic Pi, TidalCycles, and many other live-coding tools build on top of

TidalCycles ↗

project

tidalcycles.org · 2009

Live-coding environment for music that treats patterns as first-class values — sounds are described by composing, transforming, and combining pattern functions
Built in Haskell but sends OSC messages to SuperCollider; the language is the sequencer, not a GUI
Demonstrates that complex rhythmic and timbral structures emerge from simple pattern transformations applied in sequence

NASA Data Sonification ↗

project

NASA · 2020

NASA’s project translating astronomical data (X-ray, optical, infrared) into sound — each wavelength mapped to a different audio parameter
Demonstrates that sonification reveals patterns invisible in visual representations: periodicities, gradients, and anomalies become audible textures
Validates the core thesis that audio is an underexplored observability channel — if it works for galaxy clusters, it works for system metrics