Today my travels brought me to Nagano, one hour away by train from Matsumoto. I had visited both Nagano and Matsumoto the year before, around the same time of the year. The previous time in Nagano was brief, only as a waypoint between Tokyo, via Shinkansen, and Matsumoto, on a local train. On the way back to Tokyo, my colleague from Unity, Kawasaki-san, suggested we go check the impressive Zenko-ji temple in between our arrival back from Matsumoto, and the Shinkansen that was booked for a few hours later.
This time, I have more than enough time to visit Zenko-ji fully, alongside the other temples and attractions in the city. And I’m hosted at a hostel that is basically two blocks away from Zenko-ji, which is in a cozy two-storey house with thin walls. And these thin walls have basically no sound proofing - and I would say, they potentially have sound-amplifying characteristics. And this night, both a group of japanese teenagers and a family of two french parents and a young baby checked in after my checkin.
So I decided to bring that audio awareness in a quiet visual experience. I initially searched for something more typical of the word “noise” when talking about creative coding - and words like “Perlin” or “Simplex” invoke very comprehensive concepts. But there was one specific sketch from Carlos that struck me as an interesting opportunity - a “random walker” sketch.
I got inspired to modulate the walk over time - to illustrate the waves of chatter pulsating through the walls of my hostel room.