Recent content on Will Morrison
I really enjoy procedural generation, especially systems designed to work with hardware outputs. After starting work at Formlabs in September of 2023 and gaining access to much nicer printers than I was used to, I started wanting to tackle some large algorithmic structure projects. Complexity is free in 3d printing, the limit of design geometry is mostly how much time you’re willing to spend…
Project Firefly is a new method of localization using a webcam to calculate the position of a LED fixture. It was my senior capstone and the most interesting challenge of my time at Texas A&M. GitHub Repo Technical Report
I’ve always wanted to experiment with procedurally generating music. There’s a ton of interesting methods to algorithmically compose music, using parameters and randomization to generate melodies. I’ve been tinkering with the synthesizer sim VCV Rack, and was recently messing around with sending MIDI to it from Python. The second I realized that I could use this to generate…
I recently finished my DECtalk Choir project, which (mis)uses a text to speech system from the 80s to sing synchronized choral music. I decided to experiment with recording a video instead of writing an article. GitHub Repo
When I was a kid, the Boston Museum of Science launched a simulated aquarium exhibit. Visitors could design a custom fish using a handful of sliders and release it into the tank. They would float around, eat, and eventually die or leave. Despite the simplicity, I was immediately obsessed. My parents would leave me there for hours, visiting other parts of the museum while I generated dozens of…
For some time, I’ve wanting to make an autonomous, robotic instrument. There are a number of remarkable self-playing instruments projects, but every one I’ve seen requires being carefully set up and tuned before playing. Even the computer controlled builds are usually calibrated by hand, sending different control signals and tweaking to find each note. This is very time intensive, and…
In high school I took a pile of rubber bands and foam board and built something vaguely resembling a guitar. It was impossible to tune, broke if you looked at it wrong, and launched a years-long obsession with instrument design that continues to date. Recently, I have been experimenting with different sound mechanisms, trying to tune anything that makes noise. The range of sound mechanisms used in…
A random conversation on my train commute last summer introduced me to bike parties: massive improvised parades that meander through San Francisco full of speakers, LED strips, and crazy bike builds. Immediately sold on the concept, I was determined to over engineer a project to participate with. I ultimately decided to cover my bike with music-synced LEDs and after many nights soldering, coding,…
There are a number of projects I am either still working on or too small for full write-up. This page exists so I have some documentation of them without making 20 single-paragraph posts. PlantSim I am fascinated by emergent behavior in systems, and frequently program simulations to experiment with these properties. This particular sim is a cell placement evolution sim. The program…
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My family has a long and illustrious history of going backpacking in Big Bend National Park. For my sister’s birthday last year, I laser cut her a 3D topographical map of The Chisos Basin, one of our favorite locations in the park. This is a precise scale model, modeled by interpreting real world data with python. The most challenging part of the project was locating a usable heightmap…
I am a mechatronics engineer who likes to make things. I’m interested in procedural generation, musical instrument design, robotics, and pretty much anything that could be considered tech art. I made this website to have somewhere to document the things that I build. Resume