Spectral and Granular Spatialization with Boids

The author describes applications of Craig Reynolds’s boids algorithm for sound spatialization. A MaxMSP/Jitter patch is presented where the movement of individual boids in two dimensional space is rendered in OpenGL and is used to map the spatial trajectories of granular voices in a granular sampling patch and also the spatial location of a sound’s spectral components. Musical possibilities of the technique are discussed and some performance considerations are also outlined.