Instruments that playwhat they see
Sonification and vision-to-MIDI systems for musicians and performers. They read real phenomena and real data, and play what they find into your DAW, synths or modular rig, live.
LjómiAurora brightness to chord complexityIn development
MIDI For TreesBranch movement to MIDI eventsAvailable now
Pulsar SonificationPulse timing to rhythmIn the browser
VisionMIDI LiveTracked objects to piano keysIn development
SDSS-QuasarSpectra to layered voicesIn the browser
ScanlineContours to a scaleProject
It sits in your set like any other instrument
- Point it
At a live camera, a video file, or a published dataset. The aurora, a treeline, a street, a cloud chamber, a pulsar catalogue.
- Map it
Choose what drives what. Brightness to chord complexity, movement to scale degree, each detected object to a key, each colour to its own MIDI channel.
- Play it
Standard MIDI out to your DAW, hardware synths, or modular via MIDI-to-CV. In Ljómi, you can ride the parameters from a controller as it runs.
Performed
“Ljómi became a performance tool, and it paid off.”
Its first public outing was a live set at ICAD 2026 in Barcelona, on the evening we presented a paper on Pulsar Sonification. Detection, overlay and musical parameters were played from an external MIDI controller as it ran.
My time at ICAD 2026