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Transforming Realtime Air Quality and Asteroids Data into MIDI - [TouchDesigner + Ableton Live Project Files]

Added 2022-04-12 17:35:59 +0000 UTC

Through the use of Ambee’s + NASA’s APIs and TouchDesigner, I’ve managed to capture air quality and near-earth space object [asteroids and fireballs] data in real-time, and used it to trigger MIDI signals in Ableton Live. Said signals are feeding two stock samplers and an instance of SketchCassette. Samplers are loaded one with Thom Yorke’s vocal stems for Nude and Reckoning, and the other one with the song that single-handedly introduced me to guitar-playing. Can you guess what song is that?

Data goes as follows:

Near-Earth space object data to stock samplers =

total-radiated-energy → C1 to B1

impact-energy → C1 to B1, C2 to B2 and C3 to B3

latitude → C2 to B2

longitude → C1 to B1 and C3 to B3

Air quality data to SketchCassette =

CO → tape_wow_depth and tape_dropout_intensity

NO2 → tape_flutter_depth

PM10 → tape_dropout_width

PM25 → tape_dropout_depth

SO2 → tape_age

AQI → tape_saturation

PS: To my surprise, I’ve found it bizarrely difficult to find clean and unified data on what are the least and most polluted cities around the world. For example, though some real-time AQI apps marked some cities in USA as “hazardous”, this API returned “healthy” real-time values.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of marketing and politics around the subject. I hope this changes in the near-future.

Note: If you're using Ableton Live 11.1, you'll need to download the latest experimental version of TouchDesigner and use the corresponding project file.

Enjoy!