Screenshot from Behance.
WE HAVE A 6YO who enjoys keyboard activities. She has added Patatap to her toolkit, right after Friv. [1]
I discovered Patatap, a portable animation and sound kit, on Pinboard. [2] When I visited the Patatap website, my Chrome browser loaded an iFrame that mapped the letters A to Z to sounds and shapes. Then I watched our 6yo run her fingers across my laptop keyboard to create create melodies charged with moving shapes.
We stopped after my Dell battery died, but not before Mia switched between multiple colour palettes ("Dad! I can make it turn pink!") and matching soundscapes on the fly. [3]
"The motivation behind Patatap is to introduce the medium of Visual Music to a broad audience," explains Jono Brandel. "Artists working in this field vary in discipline but many aim to express the broader condition of Synesthesia, in which stimulation of one sensory input leads to automatic experiences in another. Hearing smells or seeing sounds are examples of possible synesthesia". I brought synesthesia into our social media classroom last week and will continue the discussion as we explore the start of a social media research project in support of the annual Pen & Pixel exhibition on the LSAD-Clonmel campus. We might try to bring Patatap's colourful visual animations to the 22 May exhibition. If you have a Chrome browser, you might enjoy what happens below the break.
Here's a look at the Patatap experience. After it loads on your Android handset, just move your finger around the screen. With a desktop or laptop, use your A-Z keys.
As Jono Brandel explains on his website, "The history behind the aesthetic expression of synesthesia arose from the paintings of Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky and the early videos of Viking Eggeling and Norman McLaren, to the contemporary animations of Oskar Fischinger and softwares of C.E.B. Reas. Patatap takes elements from all these visionaries and aims to present this concept in a direct way". I like it.
1. I thank BusyBees in Clonmel for exposing Mia to Friv.
2. My PLN starts at Pinboard Popular.
