Jeffrey Ventrella
In this very short video, 20 sine waves are animated by adjusting
their amplitudes (vertical scaling). It begins with the lowest
frequency (a half-sine wave) and build up by adding more sine waves.
Each sine wave is scaled in the vertical dimension with an
oscillation whose frequency is correlated with its spatial frequency
(horizontal dimension). The associated tones are (not) based on the
harmonic series, as one might expect; rather, the tones are built on
fifth intervals that accumulate to form the harmonic structure of
the circle of fifths - familiar to musicians. The emergent waves
that travel left and right were unexpected. They have metaphorical
impact and invite mathematical curiosity. This animation was coded
in plain vanilla javascript and rendered to the html canvas in
real-time. Audio is generated using html5 audio oscillators.