After the near fatal incident with my iPod last week I’ve realized that I now have full access to all my music since my HDD mirrors it (previously it was all managed from my iPod like an external HDD). In effect I am taking full advantage of music programs and have rekindled my relationship with Audiosurf.

Music is one of our societies greatest arts, and it’s so easily and widely shared that most of the time I take it for granted. While playing Interstate 8 by Modest Mouse on Audiosurf I thought about just how accurately the song was being visually represented. Audiosurf is far more than either a game or a visualizer. Most of the time neither is rooted to music in so many primal ways. In most games music will set the mood in the background, much like with film. With visualizers there’s no interaction and no scope.

Audiosurf combines those things and adds more. The key to it all is the course that is generated from the music. The track created from the digital wavelengths inside your music are the focus of the player throughout most of the play time, and even outside of it. The first time you play a track the program creates a map at which point the player is shown where to expect the most traffic, and also it shows the flow of the song.

Before the player can begin playing the song an overview of the course is given by rotating around the zoomed out arena. Upwards slopes are slower and the colors are in the cold range. Downward slopes warm up in color and contain more architecture. The color and shape now has a form which is displayed like a captured snake before the buyer.

While riding the serpentine path small nuances of the music are shown through color, accolade, and speed. Moving through the notes inside the track the color shifts from shades of color by melding perfectly from one to the next in a natural and beautiful display. When notes are passed a small light glistens off the corners enhancing the beat. Particularly intense moments involve traveling through a tunnel of arches or exploding particles in the air the same color of the track.

The whole time the eye must travel to the upper left in order to track progress represented not on a straight line, but a crooked bent one. A digital map of the music.

Speed is the second key to connection between the art, the player and the game. Upon reaching the peak of a slope the player will speed down the other side like a sledder on a hill of snow. Smaller formations and dips will garnish less speed, while mountainous heights result in velocity drops that nearly take your breath away. As the beat slows down the camera slowly pulls away from the avatar of the player while speeding up pulls the camera in. This keeps the flow of the music controlled by perspective. The theory is that when you see notes your brain will attempt to process them all. Pulling into the player’s ship limits far ahead you can see and makes processing the notes simpler. You’re not overwhelmed. When things slow down the camera pulls out so that the brain doesn’t become bored as there’s now a longer amount of track’s worth of information to process.

The course creation and speed management combine to turn music from an audio experience to a visual and tactile treat. Simple controls result in low learning curves. The wall of dissonance between the input device and player is broken down so that the emergent result can be reached by users of any experience level. The connection I had with the song Interstate 8 made me remember a scene from Mr. Holland’s Opus, which now has me contemplating other applications for Audiosurf.

Mr Holland’s Opus is a 1995 film about Glen Holland, a high school band conductor played by Richard Dreyfus. The film chronicles Mr. Holland’s life from when he begrudgingly starts teaching through his retirement. The most important thing to Glen is music and his dream is to write music and conduct a real orchestra: he pursues them above all else. When him and his wife have a baby boy who’s deaf Glen has no idea how this could have happen, and feels that his son can’t understand music nor his love of it. So, rather than learning sign language and being an understanding father, he distances himself from the child. During a dramatic Hollywood-esque he finally comes to know that his son can understand music and its significance by the way that the recent news of John Lennon’s death effects them both.

In an attempt to redeem himself in his son’s eyes Glen Holland builds a sound visualizer. In it’s design there is a special platform which amplifies the vibration of sound via a speaker directly attached, and flashing colored light to representation the music. Not only does Glen invite his son, but many other hearing impaired students from the special school he attends to seat on the vibration amplifying platform. After the initial concert Mr. Holland stands up in front of the crowd and sings a Lennon song to his son, during which he signs all of the lyrics showing that he has finally learned his son’s language.

It’s not the best written movie, nor the greatest directing, but it does have it’s moments. Seeing what is taken away from the deaf by removing music in its base form of sound makes me a little sad. Even with the device that Glen created it’s still barely half of what makes up music: the rhythm. It misses much of the melody. There are so many nuances that basic colored lights can’t show, no matter how lavishly they’re displayed. By adding a third dimension and weaving it with color and movement Audiosurf creates something completely different. While deaf persons still wouldn’t be able to hear the music, I do imagine that this game could have logopedic benefits and further the understanding of music with the hearing impaired.