Hellyn Teng, Eamon O’Connor
Unique way to explore program language design by letting users physically and rhythmically build their own code.
Description
beatlang is an experimentation in programming language design as we have discussed in the Governing Dynamics of Software course, exploring alternate possibilities with how code can be written. This project seeks to bring a physical interactivity to programming. We naturally use our sense of touch, hearing and eyesight, and why not explore the possibility of designing a language that utilizes these senses?
The idea of beatlang is to generate a type of rhythmic language, letting the users create their program by physically tapping out a rhythm on multiple, modular midi drum pad surfaces. The rhythm pattern represents the source code, with Max/Msp as its host language. A possibility in the program is to be able to have the data call on itself, generating a recursive rhythmic output.
beatlang lets people explore programming in an exciting and unique way by physically interacting with their code, and also in the process creating a sound experiment.
Classes
Governing Dynamics of Software: The Design and Implementation of Programming Languages