This is an audio device, and even the 15 minute video doesn't seem to present that vital piece of information. It's weird seeing all these animations that clearly relate to sound, but they are entirely silent. The only sounds I found were the two people talking about it.
Okay, so it is exactly what I thought it might be - essentially triggering MIDI events with a signal frequencies from a set of ECG sensors. It's been done with other arbitrary things such as fractals and scans of planetary images as the input triggers, too.
Aside: A shockingly high number of people don't seem to notice that those haunting planet sounds we get treated to occasionally, are actually scans of images processed row by row (or column by column) to produce a string of numbers, that are then mapped exactly this same way.
Having said that, as you can tell from the play list, since assigning notes force it all to be in key, plus adding lots of echo and whatnot, you can produce some really interesting soundscapes.
It is a bit of a mirage though. The waves exist, but the mappings to their peaks are man-made. You could (and should!) map to a harmonic minor scale to get some amazing Eastern sounding music out of it. In the second playlist, you can see they've added a lot more control than the usual apps of this sort.
I consider most of this to be an interesting experiment in a different type of pseudo-randomness than we usually deal with on computers. And this one has a nice wooden package to go with it.
Thank you, very good point of view, this was exactly what I was looking for on HN!
I was wondering whether to buy it but for some pseudocasual generative music and some suggestion I don't think it's the best.
Plants Play is a wearable device that allows you to listen to the Music generated by Plants and Trees. Through two electrodes settled on the leaves, Plants Play converts electrical plant variations into musical notes, and send them by bluetooth on your smartphone.
This is an audio device, and even the 15 minute video doesn't seem to present that vital piece of information. It's weird seeing all these animations that clearly relate to sound, but they are entirely silent. The only sounds I found were the two people talking about it.