Musical Topography

Musical Topography

Andrew Todd Marcus

My project is a music box, with music based off the topography of a made up skyline. First, I thought about what this mysterious city was like, and what happened in this city. I drew some sketches of this city, creating unique buildings and bridges. After creating this city, I made some skylines with six different heights. One, being a rest in the music, and two through six being different music notes. After creating these five skylines of an unknown city, picked three to use. I then overlapped two cities at a time, noticing which parts overlap, and which parts don't. I took the information I had about each skyline, and turned it into a graph. I made seven graphs in all, each graph we turned into music. Three were three separate skylines: Red, blue, and yellow. Another three were two skylines combined: Red and yellow, blue and red, and yellow and blue. And the last was all the skylines incorporated into one graph: Red, yellow, and blue. That was the final music piece. Then I sketched some boxes, and then made a box on Rhino, with an area to put the cylinder, and a surface to place the tine. After, I laser cut my pieces, put them together, and attached the tines and cylinder with nails in it. It was finally put together. When I turn the cylinder, the metal hits the tines, creating the music of this unknown city.