Example of a generative online installation - International Festival of Contemporary Music "Warsaw Autumn" | Rytm.Digital | Web Developement, Digital Design, Consulting

About challenges, inspirations, creation & programming (creative coding), and everything else that accompanies the work on new generative installations for the "Warsaw Autumn" festival.

"Warsaw Autumn" is an international festival of contemporary music with great significance and tradition (at the time of writing this article, its 66th edition is taking place). The festival has its origins in the 1950s. Since 1958, "Warsaw Autumn" has been held annually, serving as a crucial juncture for the creative ideas of composers, performers, critics, and musicologists. The festival is organized by the Polish Composers' Union.

Since 2003, each subsequent edition has had its own website aimed at providing the global audience with information about current events.

Our team was first involved in developing the website for the 51st edition, which took place in 2008.

This was a time when the organizers recognized the potential of interactive media (the website often being the first point of contact for the audience with the upcoming festival). Therefore, it was decided that the website must emphasize the creative and innovative nature of the events.

The task assigned to our team annually for 15 years (2008-2023) involves not only presenting the event program in a clear and useful manner. It also involves reinterpreting the theme of the edition, devising and implementing an interactive installation featured on the festival's homepage.

Book Covers of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival Programs

How Is the Opening Page for a New Festival Edition Created?

Installation of the 54th Edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival: a sound mixer allowing the creation of one's own musical composition (2011, Flash / ActionScript)

Our collaboration with the organizers of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival begins with evaluating the previous edition's website. Subsequently, we familiarize ourselves with the goals and theme of the new edition.

We familiarize ourselves with the profiles of the artists who will present their works. Usually at this stage, we can also see the first version of the poster, which sets the direction for the festival's graphic identity.

Recordings of the performances of the artists who will appear on the stage of the National Philharmonic or in other festival spaces are important and incredibly inspiring for us. We don't always have a comprehensive collection of recordings, as some of the works presented at the festival are premieres or world premieres. We conduct in-depth research, searching for points of connection in the available recordings and texts. We create a repository of expressive means. We try to determine extremes and commonalities. This allows us to outline an axis that leads to the creation of the first creative concepts.

At this stage, many ideas for the new installation are generated. Some of them will be developed further, while others will be discarded during the feasibility study. Close collaboration and understanding between the creative and programming teams are crucial at this stage, a collaboration we refer to as creative coding.

In the next step, visualizations of selected installation concepts are created. From the prepared designs, two or three creative directions are selected, which are presented and discussed with the festival's organizing team.

Generative Installation for the 60th Edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival (2017)

After selecting the creative line, we prepare a detailed plan leading to the implementation of the new edition of the festival's website along with the new generative installation.

Depending on the creative concept, we proceed in one of two ways:

1. Sound samples are prepared at the beginning of the production, by invited musicians, and the generative installation is built based on their processing (audio-first approach), or

2. We program the visual layer and interactions, which will be sonified at a later stage (creative coding-first approach).

The programming process of the installation is usually divided into several smaller stages and resembles an experimental workshop. Many variations of the installation are created during this phase. We experiment with various JavaScript libraries and seek optimal solutions in terms of smooth operation and fast loading.

In the next stage, the initial working prototype is tested. We assess the behavior of users on both mobile devices and computers.

Before the final version of the installation is implemented on the target domain, many improvements and changes take place.

When we refer to a generative installation, we mean an application run in a web browser that combines various digital media (in the case of "Warsaw Autumn" installation, these are typically sound and vector graphics).

We are talking about a performative application that allows the user to participate in the creation of digital art in real-time.

Within the creative framework, an algorithm processes input parameters, both defined by the written program (random parameters) and those resulting from the participation of a third party (e.g., device parameters like orientation and screen resolution, tap duration on a phone screen, or mouse movement). Based on this information, subsequent layers of the installation are generated (e.g., sound and graphic layers).

The user and the application co-create a dynamic and unique entity, integral to which is participation and interaction.

The "Warsaw Autumn" team places immense trust in us and provides the necessary space to accomplish such tasks. The realization also requires passion and a significant interdisciplinary effort from a team with overlapping competencies. For example, the person responsible for graphic design and concept thinks about the composition framework in the context of algorithms to be developed. The programmer for the installation needs to have fundamental knowledge of audio track mixing, and so on.

A crucial factor is the ability to experiment and take risks. Creating an engaging installation often follows a winding path. A good interdisciplinary team is characterized by its ability to recognize potential issues and the capacity to pivot from a dead end. It can be assumed that for every generative installation for the "Warsaw Autumn", there are several concepts that are unsuccessful and abandoned at various stages of development.

The satisfaction stemming from tangible results of our work is worth this dedication.

The average user engagement time on the page with the generative installation is 50% longer than the average time spent on all views of the website (data from September 2021, a sample of 14,000 users and 48,000 views). Presenting the new installation is a constant feature of the annual press conference held 10 days before the first concert.

Generative Installation for the 62nd Edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival (2019)

Sounding Things - Generative Installation for the 66th Edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival – Case Study.

Visitors to the 66th edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" Festival's website have the opportunity to generate and experience a unique audio-visual composition. Each click on the "Generate" button visible at the bottom of the installation results in the creation of a new set of background sounds, accidental sounds, and a unique set of parameters that determine the visual layer.

The installation allows you to listen to a generative musical piece that is highly likely never to sound the same way again.

The background sounds

From the four sets of sounds, 20 long samples (ranging from 50 to 120 seconds) were selected and prepared for looping.

Each generative composition incorporates a polyrhythmic background sound, which is created from two or three randomly selected long samples. Each time, the intensity and placement of the sample, as well as its positioning in the stereo channels, are generated randomly based on specific parameters. There are over 8,000 combinations for the background layer of the composition.

Accidental sounds

The second audio space comprises accidental sounds. Approximately 20 sounds were divided into over 130 short samples (ranging from 1 to 20 seconds).

For each composition, a random set of accidental sounds is created, containing 4 to 12 samples. These sounds are played within generative intervals on a random number of overlapping tracks.

The combination of the background space with accidental sounds allows for practically unlimited combinations of the composition's sound layer.

The visual layer of the installation consists of sets of lines or points. Each set is associated with a played accidental sound.

The sets, much like the sounds, can overlap (merge). The shape and behavior of the elements in a set (lines or points) depend on the sound intensity, its placement in the stereophonic space, as well as over 100 independent parameters of the generated composition.

The creators of the generative installation for the 2023 edition are:

Paweł Brzeziński (Rytm.Digital) - creative and visual concept of the installation
Roman Kühl (Rytm.Digital) - programming and editing of installation sounds
Paweł Romańczuk - music and sounds

Generative Installation of the 66th edition of the "Warsaw Autumn" festival (2023)