Arctic Monkeys Simulator

This term, I’m once again teaching CS 106, a second-level introductory programming course with a focus on art and data visualization. The course is taught using Processing, which provides a fun and accessible (though flawed) environment for art-focused novice programmers.

The most recent lecture includes a discussion on drawing graphs, and I thought it would be fun to replicate the visual style of the video for Do I Wanna Know? by the Arctic Monkeys, which after all just looks like a bunch of sine waves (at least to start). I showed my recreation in class. It turns out that at least one student is a big Arctic Monkeys fan, which spurred me to push things further and create a more interactive version of the visualization. Of course, once that’s in the works you can’t help but convert the code from Processing to P5.js so that it can live on the web.

With that in mind, here’s a silly Arctic Monkeys simulator.

The instructions are simple:

• Watch the video.
• Press ‘b’ (or tap the left side of the sketch) for the bass drum and ‘s’ (or tap the right side of the sketch) for the snare drum.
• Rock out.