2024
The Midnight Zone
An audiovisual installation with Slayde built around a custom GLSL SPH fluid simulation.
- Ableton Live
- GLSL
- SPH Fluid
- Audio-Reactive
Year
2024
Client / Venue
APOG Music Festival
Location
Darrington, WA
Role
Concept, software, audio-reactive system
Tools
TouchDesigner / Custom GLSL SPH fluid simulation / Ableton Live
Project Type
Audiovisual Installation
Overview
The Midnight Zone is an audiovisual installation created with music producer Slayde . Musical events inject forces into a fluid simulation, shaping its evolving motion, turbulence, density, and color.
Challenge
The goal was a visual system that moves with the music itself. Musical events needed to translate into motion, turbulence, density, and color, so the simulation would follow the structure of each track.
System
A custom GLSL SPH fluid simulation with 3.5 million particles runs in TouchDesigner. Slayde produced the soundtrack in Ableton Live and arranged the finished tracks and ambient passages on a playback timeline. As the timeline plays, Ableton sends pre-authored MIDI note and timeline data over OSC to TouchDesigner, where those events inject forces and drive color changes in the simulation. Each section uses its own fluid behavior, allowing the piece to evolve in sync with the finished soundtrack.
Building the Simulation
I built the SPH simulation from scratch in GLSL after studying Robert Bridson’s Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics and Doyub Kim’s Fluid Engine Development, choosing SPH to explore a simulation method I had not worked with before.
Shown At
- With Slayde | APOG Music Festival | 2024
Gallery
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