Thicket Transforms Your Apple Device into an Abstract Instrument and Visualizer
Not long into the Music Tech Fest’s final day in Cambridge, all serious work came to a temporary standstill with a single presentation, and not just due to sound cutting through a silent room.
“Thicket,” an interactive app for iPod, iPhone, and iPad, is the brainchild of “creative technologist and artist,” Joshue Ott. This app, which is part of a family of apps that are promoted through his web development company, Interval Studios, not only makes music, but is also an enthralling audio-visual creation that lets users make original creations of their own. During the presentation, Ott invited fellow MTF presenter and classically trained violinist Dr. Anthony De Ritis, to spontaneously take a crack at making some catchy beats, loops and blends of visual patterns with the app. (Check the Music Tech Fest website for eventual upload of video from this presentation.)
Beyond Thicket’s ability to generate colors, lines, repeating and morphing shapes, there is little definitive structure behind the use of the app. Despite performance art being one of the first associations brought to Ott’s attention, he very clearly explained that Thicket is not so much about concentrating on the audience as it is about the user.
This isn’t to say that an artist wouldn’t be inspired to use Thicket in a live application. Nevertheless, from Ott’s point of view, Thicket is about the connection and reaction of, the person actively tinkering with the app. An audience watching and enjoying Thicket in action (like all of us watching De Ritis’s inaugural trial) is more of a positive by-product. This personal experience also has implications in industries in which a self-directed app like Thicket could be helpful, such as music or chromotherapy.
Thicket contains a variety of modes that depict different primary sets of colors, shapes and sounds. The modes’ titles, such as “love,” “scary ugly” and “grass,” pair with the designated sets, and, do predispose users to some associations, like color/mood and color/object. (All except the first mode, “sinemorph,” are acquired through separate, in-app purchase) However, as an app also described as “an audiovisual playground,” the only confinement is one’s own ingenuity with tactile composition.
Thicket is free for download and available from the iTunes App Store. Thicket is also compatible with Audiobus, the inter-app audio routing hub, previously covered here.
Below is a video showing Thicket being explored in “Cathedral” mode:
Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.
