Roy G. Biv Dragon

Roy breathes life into the Land of Hopes and Dreams with his incredible ability to adapt and change given any situation.

Starting with a simple line drawing, this piece quickly became an experiment to see if I could use a set of acrylic paints I know not to be as reactive as the rest, to paint a Fantastical Landscape. I tested myself to see if I could, by memory alone, paint the landscape while mixing in the appropriate Red, Green, Blue, metallic, and neon paints to bring the dragon to life and simulate the illusion that it’s breathing a Color Chi into the painting.

At first it was a struggle to find an appropriate song to play through the Bluetooth speaker and lighting device I had at the time. I found that the painting looked best at rest and under a static set color of lighting. I took 3 color saturated photos under red, green, and blue light in an effort to discover how I could add a more dynamic and changing reaction to the lights. As I looked at the photos, tried more songs, and adjusted the electronics I realized that the problem was not so much in the painting itself but in the resolution, dynamics, and harmony of the lighting system.

16″ x 20″ Acrylic on Canvas, Dynamic rgb LED sound reactive lighting.

The current model of light controller I had built worked and did the job, but the amount of detail and color I had tried to put into this painting exceeded the current standards of lights. The light controller I had previously made worked over very rough ranges of sound and sometimes went dark even though the music still played. This was because of the lack of bandwidth it had and the inefficiency of the RC filters I had designed.

Back to the drawing board to redesign the lights and sounds. I was once only able to capture the larger sound ranges of songs and the more subtle tones and frequencies would often be missed causing an imbalance between the r, g, and b tones. This time, with those limitations in mind, I redesigned the RC filters with an active component and programmed a digital filter onto the Arduino based control.

The results are a great improvement and the lighting control can react to a wider rang of sounds and volume levels. It can even react to the subtle changes of a singers voice such as in this mix by SOOHAN: Live at Living Room.