Bouncing Music

Bouncing Music is an elegant physics-based musical game and composition tool by Chinese creative developer, Wenzy (Ziyang Wen). You can try it on Windows computers with a graphics card, for $1.50 here. Playground curator Tara Khozein and Wenzy had an email exchange, part of which you can read below

Tara: The platform is so elegant. Why was it important to you to make such a beautiful game?

Wenzy: I am enthusiastic about exploring the relationship between graphics and music. Graphics can be defined by numbers, and music can too. As I think about aesthetics, I look for how they might share the same pattern:

If I convert a few rules from a beautiful image to music, does it sound great too? Or in the opposite way. If we visualize the music as an abstract painting, does it look good?

This is the main reason I wanted to create this game.

T: Do you consider yourself a composer?

W: No. But I want to learn more about music by making this game. Currently I am more like an instrument maker. 🙂 Bouncing Music is still missing some important features before it can handle longer and more complex compositions, but I have a plan to make it more like a real composition tool.

T: Do you have a background in music?

W: No. I have an art background and I studied animation in university. After I graduated, I found an interesting field called “Creative coding”. Then I taught myself programming. Sometimes when I do generative projects, I try to combine them with music, which has led me to learn some basic music theory.