Sergey Kotsun

Website Link
Funny Video of an Orchestrion

Sergey Kotsun is a Russian media artist who works with interactive media. His most popular work is the Orchestrion. This internet machine transforms motion into music, making the viewer, the artist. The style g orchestrion was first introduced in 1911. The musical machine was said to contain the sounds of a piano, violin, flute, mandolin, bass drum, snare drum, tympani, cymbal, and triangle. The orchestrion was capable of making very high volumes of noise. Using the model for the original player, Kotsun developed a program which turns motions made with a webcam into both orchestrion music and visuals.

For those of you reading this and have about twenty minutes to spare. Please take some time to explore just what kinds of animation and visuals this guy makes. It's pretty cool. If you don't have time, at least take a look at the video of someone doing it. The link above is kind of trippy.

Sergey Kotsun has also developed some video games. They seem simple enough but with the use of 3D glasses, the game is a little more excited. In the game Star Collector, a little man walks through obstacles, collects stars, and turns moles into birds. In the game paper waves, it looks like your boat is moving through the waves and has to dodge the oncoming octopus, monsters, and whales while still collecting the floating treasure.

Besides the very cool interactive music and video games, Kotsun, has also provided the sites of programs that take the written word and turn it into music. As well, he made a program which can read off the letters spelled out. I put my name into the piano machine and it was interesting to here my name through the portal of a computer.

I think that the visuals are lacking in the composition, but the concept of turning the viewer into the artist a incredibly well thought through. I find it interesting that Kotsun used such a different sound to make this work. The orchestrion was a good idea because it doesn't limit the variations of sound.

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