Red dot party
What and why?
Have you ever wondered how you appear to others when you’re dancing your problems away, fully engaged in letting each sound wave travel through your body, guiding your movements? Red Dot Party is the exploration of that experience through sound visualization. I come from the generation that couldn’t wait to go home from school to spend the afternoon staring at Windows Media Player sound visualizer. While I loved all the different animations, I always craved for the visuals to be a little more “alive” and reactive to the music, so it’s always been my dream to be able to create such a program. Red Dot Party is essentially a visualization of sound through dynamic dots, where color, movement, and size are modulated by volume and frequency inputs from the laptop's microphone. This creates a chaotic yet mesmerizing dance of particles.
The initial concept was one circle morphing with sound waves, but it was too predictable and most importantly it was missing the personal connection I was after. That’s when I decided to replace the one circle with many smaller particles. Initially, the particles were assigned random positions and colors. However, I realized that mapping specific colors to each frequency band significantly improved the experience. To create a visually appealing and harmonious scheme, I switched from RGB to HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) color mode. Using online tools, I selected an optimal color combination: bass is represented by deep purple, lowMid by magenta, mid by leafy green, highMid by lime green, and treble by bright yellow. This approach to color mapping made the visualizations both more intuitive and aesthetically engaging. The trail effect that is visible is the way the background reacts to bass amplitudes higher than a set value. The pivotal addition was the Red Dot—a vibrant, independent character that stood out from the rest. Its unique identity, in my opinion, proposed a philosophical statement similar to this: “It is ok to move like nobody is watching and actually, when you do, you encourage others to do the same”.
My fascination lies in visualizing not just music, but mundane sounds like roadwork, a kicker match in the University’s kitchen, or typing on a keyboard. In the early stages, I frequently walked around with the program on my phone, eager to see its reaction to unexpected noises.
Another aspect that fascinates me about this way of programming is the use of randomness for unique and unexpected results. Embracing randomness poses a paradigm shift where the programmer and the program collaborate together, forming a symbiotic relationship where control and surprise can happily coexist.
Finally, during these explorations, I enjoyed capturing screenshots of the most striking compositions. This practice inspired me to integrate a new feature: the ability to download a jpg of the current canvas with a double click. This addition, in my opinion, really rounds out the whole experience.
For an optimal experience I crafted a playlist that complements the visualizations especially well.