balloons is an 888-byte digital artwork consisting of a poem about the experience of ego death whilst under the influence of nitrous oxide/"laughing gas"
the poem is followed by sonic pi code which produces generative music to accompany the poem, processed with effects to simulate the auditory hallucinations caused by the nitrous oxide
its size is limited to 888 bytes so that it can be stored on an ntag216 NFC/RFID chip which has been implanted into the artist's left hand
poem & code reproduced below, or download from https://adamjohnwilliams.github.io/art/balloons
use sonic pi to hear & interact with the music https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi
performance video coming soon
#And in that moment, movement ceases #All is still, no time progresses #Curtain up, expose the mechanism #Hey, remember the balloons? live_loop :k do sample :bd_haus sleep 0.5 sample :bd_haus sample :sn_dolf, amp: 0 sleep 0.5 end live_loop :h do sleep 0.25 sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: 0 sleep 0.25 end live_loop :b do sample :bass_hit_c, rate: 1, amp: 0.7, cutoff: (rrand_i 30, 80), res: 0.8 sleep 0.25 end with_fx :slicer do with_fx :ixi_techno do with_fx :reverb do live_loop :nos do sample :ambi_drone, rate: 1 2.times do sample :ambi_choir, rate: (rrand 0.12, 1.5), amp: 0 sleep 0.25 end 4.times do sample :perc_bell, rate: (rrand 0.12, 1.5), amp: 0 sleep rrand(0.2, 2) end end end end end #use Sonic Pi, change amp val #Adam John Williams 2016