Rap Tapestry: A Music Visualization Tool with Physical Weaving Data Physicalization

Abstract

Our work builds on the study of notational systems in the context of rap music and offers rich insights into the complexities of language, culture, and expression in a postcolonial culture. We developed our algorithm by analyzing the classic hip-hop song “93 till Infinity” by Souls of Mischief. Isolating each individual instrument is typical for MIDI files, but data is not available in this format for songs recorded before the new millennium, which were laid on 2” cellulose tapes. Thus, we recreated the song through sampling from the original mp4 format, which only supplies one track of data. As we only needed enough data to map to a visually legible design, the quality of this data was not ‘audio quality’, however, we would not have been able to computationally visualize a song of this vintage without it. With Rap Tapestry, we provide a new mode of expression for understanding the structure and flow of a rap song, mapping each instrument track individually, in combination with colored dots reflecting the rhyming patterns within the rap lyrics. The piece can be experienced in tandem with the audio or in the digital system for a finer grained level of analysis.