[Interactive Music] Final Project

35 Years of Mass Shootings in the U.S.

Source Code:

http://alpha.editor.p5js.org/marynotari/sketches/rJ-L1IY5f

Fullscreen:

http://alpha.editor.p5js.org/full/rJ-L1IY5f

Data sources:

Follman, Mark; Aronsen, Gavin; Pan, Deanna (Updated 2018, March 10). US Mass Shootings, 1982-2018: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/

Follman, Mark; Aronsen, Gavin; Pan, Deanna (Updated 2018, March 10). A Guide to Mass Shootings in America. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map/

Libraries & APIs Used:

Moment.js to calculate time between shooting events and to scale 35 years down to a few minutes

Tone.js by Yotam Mann to create and play the sounds and time them out with the animations

p5.js to create the animations

Mapbox for the map API

Instrumentation:

mp3 samples of a salamander piano keyboard fed through a convolver to simulate reverb

For more information on how to use a Sampler in Tone.js, see the documentation.

For more information on how to use a Convolver in Tone.js, see the documentation.

Description:

Using dates, locations, and numbers of fatalities and casualties (fatalities and injuries totaled) as the score, a piece of music is created. The sounds will loop forever until the player clicks the map to stop it, leading them to another page on which to take action if they so choose.