Lara's Multimedia Playground Turns Sound into Particle Patterns

Basel-based designer Lara Ozansoy has built an experimental ecosystem of five audio devices that translates sound into dynamic particle patterns users can explore, manipulate and record. The project, titled Lara's Multimedia Playground, treats music as something a person can see and shape, not only hear.

The visual engine draws on the physical principles of Chladni figures — the standing-wave patterns that appear when vibration moves particles across a resonating surface. Ozansoy applies that principle to real-time sound visualisation: incoming audio becomes shifting particle formations on screen, so a tone has a visible geometry that changes as the sound changes.

The question behind the work is direct. What if music could be more than something you hear? What if you could see its patterns, shape its visual language and interact with sound in entirely new ways? The Playground is her answer in hardware and software.

What does the system consist of?

At the centre sits an interactive interface connected to a family of five audio products:

• a microphone,
• a tape recorder,
• a MIDI controller,
• a speaker,
• and a compact round controller.

Together, these devices form one experimental ecosystem that brings sound, visual expression and physical interaction into a single playful experience. The choice of devices spans the history of music technology: the tape recorder reaches back to analogue recording, the MIDI controller addresses digital production workflows, and the microphone and speaker handle the input and output ends of the chain. The round controller adds a deliberately tactile, handheld point of contact with the system.

For practitioners, the significance lies in the pairing of input methods with a shared visual output. Each device feeds the same real-time visualisation layer, which means a voice captured through the microphone, a sequence triggered on the MIDI controller and playback from the tape recorder all surface as particle patterns the user can observe and record. Recording the visuals alongside the sound turns a transient performance into a shareable artefact.

Where does the project sit between science and art?

Ozansoy describes the work as bridging scientific principles with creative exploration. The Chladni foundation gives the visualisations a basis in acoustics rather than arbitrary generative effects; the patterns respond to the physics of the sound that produces them. That grounding matters for designers of audio tools, because a visual language tied to physical behaviour gives users a legible mapping between what they hear and what they see.

The project imagines new possibilities across several domains the designer names explicitly:

• music creation,
• audio technology,
• artist identity,
• visual performance,
• and immersive experiences.

That range positions the Playground less as a finished product and more as a design probe — a working demonstration that tactile controllers and physics-based visualisation can sit in one continuous interaction loop.

The full project documentation, with the complete image set covering the interface and all five devices, is available on Core77's design projects pages.