I hadn't planned on doing a Halloween post, but I was checking out the Whitney Music Box and one of the spheres on it looked like a jack-o-lantern, so there you have it.
"A musical realization of the motion graphics of John Whitney as described in his book Digital Harmony," the Whitney Music Box launches a large number of spheres into a rotating spiral; in one variation, every time one of the spheres crosses a line, it triggers a sampled note. The result – an oddly beautiful, shimmering sequence – sounds like an artist's rendering of what the "music of the spheres" might sound like, so it's fitting that the creators of the Whitney Music Box use spheres to trigger the samples.
There are eighteen variations currently on the site, including one that lets you hand-crank the spheres yourself and the new Halloween-themed stereo drone pictured here.
It's just a downright cool idea. Where else can you compare the sounds of prime and non-prime numbers?
