Overview
Synesthetic Music Visualization explored how audio features can drive visual deformation for emotional-regulation experiences. The system used TouchDesigner to map music properties such as amplitude and roughness into visual behavior.
Motivation
The project started from a human-centered question: if music already affects mood and regulation, can synchronized visual feedback make that experience more adaptive or expressive?
Rather than treating visualization as decoration, the work framed the visual layer as part of an affective system that should be evaluated with users.
Technical approach
- Built music visualization prototypes in TouchDesigner.
- Mapped audio features, including amplitude and roughness, to visual deformation.
- Compared soft and intense visual conditions.
- Used measures such as PSS-10, PANAS, and aesthetic pleasure in user-study analysis.
What I built / contributed
Qixuan built a visualization system, shaped feature-to-visual mappings, and conducted or analyzed two user studies comparing soft and intense visual conditions. The work strengthened his interest in HCI, affective computing, and adaptive media.
Result or evaluation
The evaluation emphasized human response rather than only technical novelty. The project is especially useful in the portfolio because it shows a complete loop: prototype, human-centered question, experimental comparison, and analysis.
Tools
TouchDesigner, audio feature analysis, affective computing, user-study measures.
Links and availability
This is a course/research artifact. Public demo materials can be added later if a clean shareable version is available.