Duration: 2 weeks | Methods: Design research, web design, web development | Tools: Figma, Three.Js, Javascript, HTML, ChatGPT | Team Size: Me
Introduction
Hundun is a web application where users can explore music via a 3D map of lines, where each line represents a different axis/scale with which the user can find and explore music. The user gathers seven songs by exploring this arbitrary quantification of music, which they are then prompted to export as a playlist.
Inspired by Professor Joseph Jay Williams' HCI class, this project was my exploration of the capabilities of AI to support my creative design process. The initial inspiration for this project was understanding the music recommendation algorithm (with a focus on Spotify). After reading "Computing Taste: Algorithms and The Makers of Music Recommendation" by Nick Seaver, which takes a more human-focused, ethnographic approach to music algorithms, I became very interested in the ideas of taste and individuality in a world where we are so dependent on receiving recommendations from a black-box algorithm.
The 3D music map that users can use to explore different ways of quantifying music and understanding musical relationships.
Hundun 混沌
At the heart of the project is Chinese mythological being 混沌 (pinyin: Hùndùn). In Taoism, Hundun symbolizes "something confused and yet complete": the original state of the universe, a formless, harmonious, abundant, and undifferentiated whole.
There's a story about Hundun in Taoism that goes like this:
"The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu [Brief], the emperor of the North Sea was called Hu [Sudden], and the emperor of the central region was called Hun-tun [Chaos]. Shu and Hu from time to time came together for a meeting in the territory of Hun-tun, and Hun-tun treated them very generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they could repay his kindness. "All men," they said, "have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Hun-tun alone doesn't have any. Let's try boring him some!" Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hun-tun died."
One interpretation of the story is that Hundun died because he was deprived of his basic nature, with Shu and Hu forcing their ideas of what it means to be normal upon a being that represents formless primordial chaos. This reminded me of the flattening of a hyper-dimensional mapping of relationships into a particular set of axes to understand the music space, thus flattening an infinitude of understandings into a particular imagining.
As an homage to the story of Hundun, the web application only allows users to generate a playlist of seven songs.
Hundun, as described in the Shanhaijing
Process
In my imaginings and creation of this project, I experimented with a multitude of generative AI tools to explore how I can use AI to supplement and extend my thinking.
Firstly, I wanted DALL-E to help me re-imagine the physical character of Hundun, as a pivotal concept in my project, to help me begin brainstorming the rest of the project.
The different approaches I took to generate hundun
The variety of forms created by the different prompts I gave DALL-E, combined with the nondeterministic nature of LLMs, inspired me to combine the different outputs I got into a GIF, which helped embody the idea of hundun as a morphing, 'undefinable' entity.
Landing page
Loading page
I then used ChatGPT to help me flesh out the code for the implementation of Hundun and understand how to use different libraries (e.g. three.js) to execute the functionality I wanted.
Typing animation achieved with basic Javascript, created in conjunction with ChatGPT
