XII

XII emerged from an interest in placing an audiovisual artwork inside a mobile application. The work could be carried, launched and experienced as a running system on an iPhone or iPad.

Each execution brings composition, image and interaction together in real time. The application becomes the work's medium of distribution as well as its performance environment.

The user defines the order of a twelve-tone sequence. Around that sequence, XII generates octave placement, note duration, velocity, polyphony, tempo, structure and expression.

The interface remains deliberately limited. Taps can produce notes, gestures rotate the 3D graphics, and the sequence can run forward or in reverse, while much of the compositional behavior remains inside the generative system.

The generated music animates the real-time 3D scene through movement and lighting. Sound and image therefore share the same running process, with the visual field changing as the musical system unfolds.

XII also supports Wi-Fi MIDI output, allowing its generated note activity to continue into external music-production or performance environments.

The surviving documentation shows XII as a continuing project rather than a single fixed release. Videos from 2014 and 2021 trace changes in the audiovisual language, the automatic-composition system and the way the work is encountered as an application.

Development also produced visual scenes that were later left outside the released work. This fragment preserves one of those directions as part of XII's process archive.

Keeping it visible makes the development history more complete: the visual language was tested, narrowed and revised across versions, and some scenes remained as traces of paths that were not continued.

XII combines a generative music system, real-time 3D graphics and a small set of direct interactions inside a mobile audiovisual application.

• Musical basisUser-defined twelve-tone sequence
• Automatic generationOctave · duration · velocity · polyphony · tempo · structure · expression
• Visual systemReal-time 3D graphics driven by generated music
• InteractionSequence setup · forward/reverse order · tap-generated notes · gesture-controlled rotation
• ConnectivityWi-Fi MIDI output to external hosts
• PlatformiPhone · iPad