Seaquence: If Band Was More Like Biology Class

By Ian S. Port Tue., Oct. 5 2010 at 9:00 AM

Categories: Tech

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Is anyone else having eerie flashbacks from that frozen worm episode of The X-Files?

We brought you Code Organ, the website that turns ordinary webpages into full-fleged instrumental arrangements. That was cool. But what if, instead of an instrument, playing music was more like biology class? Like, say, watching little living things squirm inside a petri dish?

That's exactly the idea behind Seaquence, a new web project that imagines music production like a microscopic, hydrophilic organism that you can poke and modify. Although it's not that intuitive to figure out, the site seems to have quite a bit of noise-making potential: you can have your organism vibrate in various kinds of synth tones, arrange the rhythm and pitch just so, and even change the creature's shape. (Also, the thing makes really cool noises when your computer gets overloaded. We hereby stake out all claims to the fledgling genre Seaquence-glitch.)

We confess to being not all that stoked about the idea of a science-class remake of musicianship (music was what helped us escape from science class, actually) but we have to give some points here for sheer off-the-wall imagination. And for the incredible distraction from work this could offer. So have at it, folks -- we may have just screwed your Tuesday morning productivity-wise, but at least it's for the larger cause of musical creativity.

Follow us on Twitter @SFAllShookDown and @iPORT

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