Interactive Audio for the Web
Jim Andrews


NEWENIGMA N2022
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
A philosophical music and poetry toy for poets, musicians and philosophers from the age of 7 up. Just beneath the surface of this sonic world lie unsuspected whole worlds of undiscovered music. Let me take you there. Fun for the whole philosopher fam.
JAVASCRIPT


NEONIO
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
NeoNio is a 2021 upgrade to HTML5 of an interactive music/animation program in two 'verses' from 2000. Jim Andrews sang it, created the visuals, and wrote the programming. It was mentioned in the NYTimes in a column on the best net art of 2001.
JAVASCRIPT


OPPEN DO DOWN
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
Jim Andrews sang, recorded and smithied this heap of interactive music. Click a word to toggle its sound on/off. Blue words are playing. Gray words are off. This was originally done in Director. Andrews created a JavaScript version using the Web Audio API. He wrote about it here.
JAVASCRIPT


WAR PIGS
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
War Pigs (2007), available as a 32-bit downloadable app for Windows or Mac desktop computers, is an interactive music game, an odd musical instrument, and a different way of listening to the great 1970 anti-war anthem War Pigs by the heavy metal band Black Sabbath.
DIRECTOR


JIG-SOUND
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
Link sound-icons together with blue lines to play them one after another; link them with green lines to play them simultaneously. Copy single icons or groups of icons (drag around a group to select the group).
WINDOWS

Others


NEWCHOIR
by Chris Joseph (UK/Canada)
A generative music piece from changing the pitch of one choral sample. Chris tells me "There's a 4 bar progression of scales going on: A minor -> F -> C -> G". Whether that is invariant under pitch change isn't clear. Sounds great though. You can adjust the "note range" and the bg color. Chris has created one of the best sites on the web for interactive, multimedia art at chrisjoseph.org.
JAVASCRIPT


NEW80x25
by Jörg Piringer (Austria)
Type. You hear the sounds of the letters you type. Jörg's site has many excellent interactive audio works.
JAVASCRIPT


NEWPI SONGS
by Jeffrey Ventrella & Canton Becker (USA)
A music generating algorithm was composed to produce music using the first one billion digits of pi (π). These digits supply the "turn signals" that determine every musical expression in the song. Each digit (3.1415...) is responsible for orchestrating approximately four seconds of music. The electronic instruments and sound samples were prepared by the composer in advance.
JAVASCRIPT


NEWCOMPOSITE NUMBER POLYRHYTHMS
by Jeffrey Ventrella (USA)
Thoughtfully entertaining exploration of rhythm as cyclic among numbers by the algorithmic artist Jeffrey Ventrella.
JAVASCRIPT


NEWTHICKET
by Joshue Ott & Kenneth Kirschner (USA))
"Thicket is an audiovisual playground that allows anyone to create beautiful sounds and pictures from simple finger touches. For users of all ages, this generative art and sound app immerses you in song-like audiovisual pieces called modes.""
IOS


NEWDEAR DIARY
by Stephen Haney, Suyash Joshi, Devin Lane (USA))
An affecting piece. You type, and it shows what you type and creates music for it, while you type. Great keyboard interactivity. It combines the keyboard as typewriter and keyboard as musical instrument.
JAVASCRIPT


VENN 7
by Nathan Ho (Spain)
Sounds and looks great! Click on regions in the diagrams to play chords, and use the arrows to navigate between the six 7-Venn diagram and one 5-Venn diagram. Venn 7 is a Web app exhibiting interactive versions of symmetric 7-Venn diagrams by mapping them to musical chords.
JAVASCRIPT


PINK TROMBONE
by Neil Thapen (Czech Republic)
This is a marvelous piece. Interactively move the mouse around to change the position of the tongue to shape human sound. More work by Neil Thapen at venuspatrol.nfshost.com
JAVASCRIPT


RADIO GARDEN
by Studio Puckey & Moniker (Netherlands)
The Google Earth of radio. Move around the globe. Tune in to different radio stations.
JAVASCRIPT


TONES
Author unknown (England)
This sounds great. And it allows you to make synth music that sounds great. And share it. The functionality is extensive. Fantastic piece.
JAVASCRIPT


GLOWSYNTH
Ed Ball, Nik Rowell (UK)
You can hook a MIDI device to this web page, which is interesting. You can also use the keyboard or the mouse to play notes in Glowsynth, which triggers an animation as in the icon.
JAVASCRIPT


PURRLI
Stéphane Pigeon (Denmark)
Configurable purr generator programmed with the Web Audio API.
JAVASCRIPT


Dancing Markov Gymnopédies
Tero Parviainen (Finland)
Interesting codepen trained on Satie. Doesn't sound very good but very interesting work.
JAVASCRIPT


PLINK
by Dinahmoe.com (Sweden)
Online multi-player musical instrument. Sounds great. Works very well as multi-player (I tried it with two computers at once)--very low latency. Intuitive design. If it says "Loading" and just stays there, you need to enable WebGL if yer machine supports it.
JAVASCRIPT


FLAME
by Xiaohan Zhang (USA)
A 3D generative fractal flame and generative audio piece that is seeded by a word/phrase you type in. The fractal flame changes as you type.
JAVASCRIPT


NOISES.ONLINE
Stéphane Pigeon (Denmark)
Highly configurable natural sound scapes. Choose the mix of brooks, creeks, streams, waterfalls, different types of shores, waves, rain, thunder, wind, animal sounds, chimes, and more.
JAVASCRIPT


BRAINAURAL.COM
Stéphane Pigeon (Denmark)
"This software is capable of producing the widest range of brainwave modulations available so far, such as binaural beats, isochronic tones, bilateral entrainment, modulated white noise, and more! We allow up to five different brainwaves frequencies (1-5) to be mixed together to create complex entrainment routines."
JAVASCRIPT


ACID DEFENDER
by Patrick Borgeat (Germany)
Audio game. Drag your white notes out of the way of the red squares.
JAVASCRIPT


PUBLIC SEQUENCER MATRIX
by Patrick Borgeat (Germany)
Multi-player sequencer matrix. Changes made are seen by all.
JAVASCRIPT


PATATAP
by Jono Brandel & lullatone.com (USA/Japan)
Press keys on the keyboard. A different sound and animation plays for each key. These folks also wrote a piece called Typeatone.
JAVASCRIPT


TOUCH PIANIST
by Bathuan Bozkurt (Turkey)
Press any key on the keyboard to play the notes/chords in complex music.
JAVASCRIPT


FORMS - SCREEN ENSEMBLE
by Eduard Frigola, Eduard Llorens, Eloi Maduell, Santi Vilanova (Spain))
"...a generative visual music jukebox. Driven by chance and probability, this automata creates endless, unrepeatable graphic scores that are immediately transformed into sound by means of sonification algorithms. Images become sound spectrums, making it possible to -literally- hear what you see. "
INSTALLATION


FUNK'S SOUND BOX
by Chris Funkhouser (USA)
Literary readings/performances and musical audio tracks.
JAVASCRIPT


TYPEDRUMMER
by Kyle Stetz (USA)
Type to create a beat. Interesting percusive logic.
JAVASCRIPT


WINDOW (for John Cage)
by Katharine Norman (Eng)
Window, winner of the 2012 New Media Writing Prize, is an online and/or app-based interactive sound essay about listening and everyday experience. Turn up the sound and listen.
JAVASCRIPT


JUST A REFLECTOR
by Arcade Fire (Cdn)
Interactive music video from Montreal's Arcade Fire. You can use a mobile device in conjunction with a desktop/laptop, or just a desktop/laptop. Quite sophisticated in terms of interactive video for the web.
JAVASCRIPT


THE ARCADE FIRE
by Chris Millk & The Arcade Fire (Canada)
The Wilderness Downtown is an innovative alternative to the music video; it's a 'film' of a song called "We Used to Wait" from The Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs, which won the 2011 Grammy for best album of the year. The Arcade Fire (from Montréal) also made an earlier interactive audio piece with their song Neon Bible (in Flash).
JAVASCRIPT (HTML 5)


WEB AUDIO ACID MACHINE
by errozero (Liverpool)
Sounds great. Easy to use. Click 'play'. Then click 'randomize'. Fiddle with controls. You can't break it. It sounds fantastic!
JAVASCRIPT


SONODROME
by Jim Frize & Kat Pattison (UK)
Permute is a generative audio/visual art work. Sonodrome is a design studio that develops hardware and software for creative applications, and provides consultancy services from Leicester, UK.
JAVASCRIPT


WEB AUDIO API THEREMIN
by Luke Phillips (Eng)
A touch friendly & responsive audio synthesizer built in JavaScript using the Web Audio API with an HTML5 canvas. As the user interacts with the screen, synthesized sounds are generated in the style of a moog theremin and the canvas displays a visual representation of the audio. Works on desktop machines and the iPad in Chrome.
JAVASCRIPT


MMORPH
by Owen Hindley (UK) and MassiveMusic
Possibly interesting for some people.
JAVASCRIPT


DAXO.DE
by Hans Reichel (Germany)
A dozen charmingly interactive works by the late Hans Reichel using his amazing daxophone. Performing meerkats, a history of Reichel's guitar making and typography, and more.
FLASH


ANDRE MICHELLE
by André Michelle (Germany)
André's lab of his experiments with Flash work is very interesting. Sort of like JSyn work in its granularity and wave synthesis. The audio capabilities of Flash have greatly increased over the last few years, and Andre Michelle is at the front in exploring those possibilities.
FLASH


I SAID IF
by Lia (Austria)
Terrific generative visual and sonic piece by LIA. Click the black space. Adjust the controls at bottom. Or just let it do it's very wonderful thing. In addition to being beautiful to view, it's an intriguing and somewhat enigmatic art machine. Much more at liaworks.com.
DIRECTOR


SOUND SEEKER
by Jhave Johnston (Canada)
Sound Seeker is a "code-synch beat-match jump-edit txt-tool". Jhave says Sound Seeker is "an online real-time beat-synchronized poem animator. Sound drives the rhythm of the words: their speed and style of display can be controlled." The homepage shows twelve experimental video poems produceds with Sound Seeker. Access the underlying interactive Flash app in the "Method" section. In the "Motivation" section, Jhave discusses remarks by Rudolph Arnheim concerning intermedia. A fascinating poetry, programming, video, audio, 3D animation, and theory/poetics project--and the writing is very lively on its own. A significant project in digital poetry of considerable achievement.
FLASH


WEBYARNS.COM
by Alan Bigelow (USA)
Multimedia poems and stories/yarns. The older work is done with Flash; the newer work is in HTML5 and good for mobile.
JAVASCRIPT/FLASH


F8MW9
by Jim Andrews & margareta waterman (Canada, USA)
The audio jumps around a voiced/sung recording by margareta waterman and reveals her visual "glyphs" in the process. Configure the maximum duration of the samples and click on the waveform or "glyphs" to make it play/show that part. Conceptual+experience.
DIRECTOR


FLOU
by Jason Freeman (USA)
Flou is not exactly a game; you fly a ship through space but you can't shoot things, score points, or win/lose. The focus is on the soundtrack: you navigate a 3D world and add loops and apply effects to an ever-evolving musical mix.
JAVA


JASONFREEMAN.NET
by Jason Freeman (USA)
Several innovative pieces including Graph Theory.
VARIOUS


ALTZERO
by Squid Soup (Britain)
Squid Soup's altzero project consists of eight Shockwave works of "navigable spatial music" and a downloadable editor where you can make your own. In most pieces, you use the arrow keys and mouse to navigate 3D spaces; where you go determines the audio. The audio is original and highly atmospheric, goes well with the unusual visual environments.
DIRECTOR


THESQUAREROOTOF-1
by James Tindall (Britain)
thesquarerootof-1 is an online audio-visual interactive 'album'. Modifyme is also worth a look, and there's work on Tindall's atomless.com he's done for Fat Boy Slim etc.
DIRECTOR/FLASH


RE-MOVE
by Lia (Austria)
Many of the RE-MOVE pieces involve strong interactive audio, strong in its audio, visuals, and interactivity.
DIRECTOR


VISMU
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
Assorted works.
DIRECTOR


In Bb 2.0
by Darren Solomon (USA)
20 Youtube videos arranged in a 5x4 grid. Play them as you please. Each one consists of a different instrument and different recording in Bb (B flat).
HTML/YOUTUBE VIDEO


AUDIOTOOL
by Andre Michelle and friends (Germany)
This is the most sophisticated online audio tool I've seen. There are a couple of tutorials at youtube on how to use it. The lead developer of this is Andre Michelle, who has an interesting online 'lab' of his experiments. Andre Michelle appears to be the Flash audio programming guru.
FLASH


NANOENSEMBLES
by Antoine Schmitt (France)
Also check out Venus and his projects page.
DIRECTOR


SERVOVALVE
by Servovalve (France)
The music is, as he says, "electronic, rhythmic, energic, atmospheric, horologic (clock connected), meta-lithurgic... subambient... neurodance" and the visuals, set in the black background, derive their energy not at all from ornament but from their motion with the music and their programming-controlled transformations and movement. More on Servovalve (2003 profile)
DIRECTOR


NETART.ORG.UY
by Brian Mackern (Uruguay)
Brian Mackern has created many "sound toys". Look for that term on his homepage and click those links. Also, there are many links to the work of others on Brian's site.
FLASH


WORKS FROM ARTZERO.NET
by Vera Sylvia Bighetti (Brazil)
Made to (Un)Order is a suite of 6 interactive audio pieces. A mixture of the tuneful and the electronic. Also check out Fulfill Fullness.
DIRECTOR


DIRTY PUNK FUCKIN' ANARCHY MACHINE
by Zanorg.com (France)
Seven high-energy interactive works: Dirty Punk Fuckin' Anarchy Machine; The indian shankar drum ganesh machine; L'Automachine; Medieval Music Mixer; Salut � toi, la machine; Hyperactive machine; and The psychedelic supperdubber machine from outer space. These are keyboard and mouse interactive works. Really well done!
FLASH


FOLK SONG FOR THE FIVE POINTS
by David Gunn, Alastair Dant, Tom Davis, Victor Gama (USA)
"Folk Songs for the Five Points is a celebration of cultural diversity and change, using “folk songs” as a metaphor to explore immigration and the formation of identity in New York’s Lower East Side." Click and drag the circles. Most interactive audio pieces focus on exploring audio/music and interface. The exploration here is more of geography and culture.
FLASH


SOUND GARDEN
by babel & binnorie (Cdn & USA)
Gently mouse over this piece for layers of animated flowers and layers of vocals by binnorie. also check out "strAngel" for another collaboration between babel & binnorie.
FLASH


VERTICE.CA
Andrew Watson (Canada)
Interactive surround sound tableaus. "A sound tableau is an interactive surround sound composition that allows you to control the sounds you hear with, in this case, your mouse."
FLASH


SiON
by Keim (Japan)
SiON is a fantastic audio tool for online audio. Whether you are a Flash developer or a JavaScript developer, you can use this library to create very impressive dynamic work. Be sure to check out the Examples.
FLASH


SOUNDTOYS.NET
curated by Stanza (Britain)
An ongoing anthology of interactive sound works and a collection of writings on sound. See also a profile of Stanza.
VARIOUS


STICKY SOUND ELASTIC STRUCTURE
by Santiago Ortiz (Colombia)
Charming 3D geometrical sonic animism. Also see Ortiz's other interactive sonic works.
FLASH


WIND CHIME MARIMBA
by Rob Wright & Richard Polfreman (UK)
Aleatoric music composition. The brown circles represent marimba samples of different pitches. Notes are triggered when brown circles collide with the other objects. These other objects modify the nature of the sound played.
FLASH


MODULAR SYNTH
by MIT (USA)
Influence (along with others) a big analog synth MIT has hooked up to the internet.
????


ARCANGEL CONSTANTINI
by A. Constantini & Alvaro Ruiz (Mexico)
Also check out his bakteria.org.
FLASH


SOUND POEMS
by Jörg Piringer (Austria)
Interactive automata sound poems.
FLASH


EKPUROSIS
by Xavier Pehuet (France)
Ekpurosis is "universal regeneration"; many visual and auditory movements. Visuals done with Imaging Lingo.
DIRECTOR


P-SOUP
by Mark Napier, John Maxwell Hobbes, and Kees van den Doel (USA)
Waves of interactive pure tones and colour/shapes. This was made when Java could only handle 8-bit sound..
JAVA


CTRALTDEL.ORG
by Peter Luining (Netherlands)
Peter Luining's site of Shockwave interactives; uses short sounds, rectilinear graphics; many net art audio works.
VARIOUS


IXI SOFTWARE
by Thor Magnusson (Iceland) & friends
A group collaborating on the creation of downloadable Shockwave technology and music. You download their tools and use them to create music and visuals.
DIRECTOR


SONGSMITH
by Dan Morris, Sumit Basu, Ian Simon (USA)
Sing into a microphone or play an instrument into it and this product of Microsoft Research apparently helps you create a song from it. The promo video reaches Limburger on the stinky cheese slider scale. Someone ran David Lee Roth vocals through Songsmith here.
C++?


REPERCUSSION
by Carla Diana (USA)
A collection of 3D virtual instruments. The interface is the interesting thing here. Visually well-designed Flash 3D.
FLASH


AUDIOGAME.NET
by Marc Em (France)
A suite of amusing audio toys.
FLASH


BLONK ORGAN
by Jaap Blonk and friends (Netherlands)
Japp Blonk is a famous sound poet and writer. This work is from 1997, making it one of the first interactive sound poems on the Web.
DIRECTOR


NEON BIBLE
by Vincent Morisset & friends (Canada)
An original song with terrific visual interactivity—much better than a typical music video. Also check out Vincent's site vincentmorisset.com for other projects.
FLASH


COLD WAR KIDS
by Nathan Willett, Jonnie Russell, Matt Maust, & Matt Aveiro (USA)
Interactive version of "I've Seen Enough". Click above to change the version of the instrumentation by the particular performer. Click the performer to turn him on/off.
FLASH


PIANOGRAPHIQUE
by Jean-Luc Lamarque (France)
Keyboard and mouse controlled aural/visual interactivity. This project has been ongoing for several years; a new piece is added at least once a year.
DIRECTOR


ELECTRICA
by Gundula Markeffsky, Peter Huehlfriedel, Leonard Schaumann (Germany)
If you can get this working, this is terrific. Uses the Beatnik plugin. Supplies a link to an installable exe of the plugin, and requires Netscape 4. I installed the plugin and installed Netscape 4.72 but couldn't get it working on my Windows XP system. But I tell ya this is/was one of the most exciting interactive sound works for the Web. A crying shame it's so hard to get working now!
BEATNIK/MIDI
 

Writings & Video


NEWEnigma n2022
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
An essay on Enigma n2022, a work of interactive granular synthesis + color music + digital poetry + sound poetry.


NEWSpace Palette
by Tim Thompson (USA))
This is the web site of the creator of Space Palette, an interesting installation-based instrument of interactive visual music.


NEWDensity & Time
by Bill Wiatroski (USA))
A video of a performance, by Bill Wiatroski focused on live sampling and granular synthesis. The visuals were made on a modular video synth by Bill.


NEWListening in Code
by Andy Kelleher Stuhl (USA))
Stuhl's 2016 MIT Master's thesis on interactive audio works by Reiko Yamada, Morgan Packard and Joshue Ott, Yotam Mann/Sarah Rothberg, and Pamela Z.


NEWAbsoluteValueOfNoise.ca
by Peter Courtemanche (Canada)
Peter Courtemanche is an amazing audio artist and artist-programmer from Vancouver. He doesn't do much if any interactive audio for the web, but he has a significant online site concerning his work.


Getting Started with the Web Audio API
by Boris Smus (Canada)
Very good introductory tutorial on how to program with the Web Audio API by Boris Smus of Google.


How Generative Music Works
by Tero Parviainen (Finland)
An interactive slide deck from a talk he gave at Loop Berlin. Tero dives into the history of generative music and how Steve Reich, Brian Eno, John Cage, Terry Riley and others built systems that generate music. It's peppered with interactive, web-audio powered illustrations.


Learn Web Audio
by Tero Parviainen (Finland)
The first of five (and hopefully more in the future) posts by Tero on the Web Audio API.
Part 0: What Is the Web Audio API?
Part 1: Signals and Sine Waves
Part 2: Controlling Frequency and Pitch
Part 3: Controlling Amplitude and Loudness
Part 4: Additive Synthesis And the Harmonic Series


Do Androids Dream of Electric Guitars? Exploring the Future of Musical A.I.
by Jayson Greene (USA)
A detailed overview by Jayson Greene of Pitchfork of recent research into new AI approaches to generating music. The article looks at Sony's Flow Machines project as well as the Magenta initiative lead by Google.


A Tale of Two Clocks - Scheduling Web Audio with Precision
by Chris Wilson (USA)
A widely cited article on how to implement precise rhythm in the Web Audio API.


Nio and Jig-Sound: Heaps
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
A video about heaps, a new form of interactive music by Jim Andrews as shown in Nio, Jig Sound Oppen Do Down, and other works.


War Pigs
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
A video about War Pigs, an interactive music game that uses War Pigs by Black Sabbath.


Sonic Wire Sculptor
by Amit Pitaru (USA)
A video of the Sonic Wire Sculptor, an interactive music piece by Amit Pitaru for the iPhone (2010). There's also a video of an earlier version (2003).


ABOUT JIG-ARTEROIDS
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
An introduction to and essay about Jig-Arteroids, which is an interactive audio piece I wrote in Director (2009).


INTERACTIVE AUDIO FOR THE WEB
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
I wrote this after putting these links together (2006). A look at interactive audio for the Web as an art form.


NIO AND THE ART OF INTERACTIVE AUDIO FOR THE WEB
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
A 2001 essay.


TECHNOTES ON NIO AND AUDIO PROGRAMMING WITH DIRECTOR
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
A 2002 essay on how the Nio programming was done in Director.


INTERACTIVE AUDIO ON THE WEB
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
A 2003 essay on the elements of interactive audio on the Web. Many of the links don't work anymore, but the ideas still work.


THE BLOOM IPHONE APP BY BRIAN ENO
Brian Eno (UK)
A video that shows someone playing with the lovely Bloom app.


SOUNDTOYS.NET ESSAYS AND OTHER WRITINGS
many authors (International)
A large collection of writing on sound art and computer audio.


NETART.ORG.UY WRITING LINKS
many authors (International)
Scroll down in the linked doc and you'll find a section called ref.theory.links, which links to various writings on audio art and technology.


INTERNET RADIO
by Jim Andrews (Canada)
Links to and thoughts on Internet radio, which is a more interesting 'band' than the regular radio band.


YOUTUBE ON INTERACTIVE MUSIC
by various (International)
There are quite a few interesting videos at youtube.com concerning offline interactive music projects. In particular, have a look at Reactable.


1995 VIDEO ON INTERACTIVE MUSIC
S. O'Brien, D. Fox, S. Cheifet (USA)
A 1995 episode of the TV show The Computer Chronicles on interactive music. Interesting to see what it was like in 1995. Demonstrations include Vid Grid, Sound Toy, William Orbit Strange Cargo, So You Want to be a Rock & Roll Star, Rock & Roll On Your Own, Dylan:Highway 61 Interactive, Video Jam, and Vivace. Also featured is a visit to Todd Rundgren's sound studio.
 

Other news sources


WEB AUDIO WEEKLY
by Chris Lowis (Canada)
Web Audio Weekly is a newsletter you can subscribe to that gives you news about online works, tutorials, articles and developments in all things Web Audio API.


GRATIN.ORG
by Antoine Schmitt (France)
Links to works and resources concerning algorithmic art. Not all the links concern sonic art, but there are good ones here that do.


VISUALMUSIC.BLOGSPOT.COM
by Maura McDonnell (Ireland)
A blog on visual music. Lots of great links and videos--for instance, to a video by Varese & Le Corbusier called Poeme electronique from 1958.


NEURAL.IT
by Alessandro Ludovico (Italy)
Whenever new works of interactive audio on the net are made, they often show up here first. Scroll through neural.it looking for works labelled "e-music". Some of them are Web-based.


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