Forager
Feel the magic of Machine Learning in this new experiment that combines over 44,000 sounds from Freesound, a data set created by Kyle McDonald and a touch of Cabbibo weirdness.
Run your hands through a cloud of sound, learn the shape of the computers mind, select your favorite audio delicacies and make a drum set from this decadent aural smorgasbord.
The mechanics may be simple ( navigate through a 3D map of sounds , select individual sounds to keep, and hit those sounds again to play them ), but because of absolutely massive size of the data set, the possibilities are endless!
Want to create your own piano out of synth notes? Go ahead!
How about a marimba of pops and crackles? Be my guest!
And if you are just the exploring type, the data is beautiful enough to begin with! There is no need to make an instrument, or play it, because in from of you lies a tool for discovering and understanding a beautiful algorithm, and even more beautiful data: Sound
This project would not be possible without the amazing community of FreeSound.org
As well as Kyle McDonald, who scraped audio from freesound.org & made t-SNE embeddings of the data!
Created during Unity Artist in Residency 2017
Steam User 10
I ended up dancing all over my play space exploring the strange sounds and their relation to eachother.
A great weird place to spend some time!
Steam User 6
Experienced on the Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers
Neat little music app. Tons of fun can be had just exploring the game. Each experience will be different with the sheer amount of sounds available to play with. Hear a sound you like? Just grab it and bring it close to you. Then pick another and mix them all together. You don't need any musical acumen to create your own unique musical mix. Creating awesome beats is fun and easy, although it can be overwhelming.
Unfortunately, there are some issues on the Oculus Rift with Touch. Your Touch controllers will show visually as HTC Vive wands. I think there may also be button mapping issues. I definitely experienced some funky things happening when I pressed trigger buttons, at least they were inconsistent. I had to press trigger usually more than once to grab items. Navigating my way through the play space was frustrating. At least on the Oculus Rift, there is a cube behind you that you can reach out and navigate to the spot where you hear sounds you like. But navigation was cumbersome and I'm still not sure how I was able to move about other than by pressing trigger on both wands and it would sporadically happen. But worst of all, the cube disappeared several times in my playthroughs and I wasn't sure how to get it back (if you can).
In any event, I had fun. This is a cool app that is almost a must download for even Oculus Rift users. Thank you devs for bringing this to VR land. Amazing work!
Rating 7/10
Steam User 3
I picked app up because the developer's other games are so very amazingly creative examples of what can be done in VR that we couldn't have done before.
I thought I'd just check it out for a few minutes to see what it was about, solely because of the developer, and I'm legit surprised at how cool of a concept this is 'live.' I have next to no musical talent, but It was *really* cool to whip up a beat made up entierly of random sound samples pulled from the internet, and arranged in clouds of bubbles I could nagivate, touch, and manipulate in 3D space.
You wave our hands through a cloud, and when you hear a sound you like, you pull the 'trigger' to mark that sound for easy re-use. Within a minute or so, you have a whole soundboard of random sounds from all over the place, and you can play each one just by waving your hands through the icons you made. It's friggin' awesome!
This concept is cool as hell for non-musically inclided folks, but I could see musical folks using this software for some *really* cool sample gathering.
Steam User 7
It's pretty random. I didn't find it very interesting, but it's an interesting idea.
Steam User 2
Audio Forager is a free VR experience where you explore all the sounds of Freesound dot org. It worked on my system, looked ok, played ok, sounded ok. Puts you in a universe of sound points that you can link to ball and then touch the ball to make the sound. The problem i saw with program was: No instructions, explanations, help and no deletion of balls.
Try it, you might like it.
For more info:
Steam User 1
---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Gnome.
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
---{Gameplay}---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☑ Gnome.
---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☑ Gnome.
---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☐ Adults
☐ Human
☑ Gnome.
---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Gnome.
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☐ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Gnome.
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{Grind}---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☑ Gnome.
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding
---{Story}---
☐ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☑ Gnome.
☐ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life
---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Gnome.
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Gnome.
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{Bugs}---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Gnome.
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
Steam User 2
I wonder if this actually utilizes Machine Learning, if even releavant or what not. Maybe this was an early AI application that all went under our nose. In any event, like all the other Cabbibo stuff, it's very abstract and colorful and whimsical. I wonder if I could create a track of 'music' with this. It would sound like Autechre I bet.