WBMO Adventure
WBMO (Brownian Motion) Adventure is a narrative soundscape featuring excerpts form the Pokémon Emerald soundtrack. It shifts between "channels" which each feature one track from the game, according to the value of a computer simulation Brownian Motion, which is a random process found in probability theory and in statistical mechanics. The piece will only end once the process reaches an upper or lower limit. The exact version of the pieces is random, and determined by the progression of the process, which will be different each time the Python program is run. The piece could take as little as one minute, and could also take ten or more. The piece is guaranteed to terminate, but it could go on for as long as you could imagine.
The YouTube videos below showcase pre-recorded versions of the piece, with the first two displaying the graph of the corresponding iteration of Brownian Motion. The horizontal lines represent delineations between the various channels, with the upper and lower lines as the final destinations, at which point the piece will conclude. The length of each video is set at ten minutes, so the listener has no idea how long the piece will last, as intended. The following two display no visualization, so the listener can take in the piece without any idea where in the process they are.
This link is to a Python notebook containing the code for the program, with a button (which is not yet intractable but I'm working on it) where the listener will be able to produce a completely new and unique version of the piece that no one else will ever hear. Unfortunately, it will take a while to generate, so be patient, and the exact length of the audio file will be displayed, eliminating some of the random experience, but the uniqueness factor will nevertheless still be there.
If you would like a completely unique version of the piece for your own ears only, email me at whartog@college.harvard.edu and I will humbly oblige.
