Description
Aural Matter is a real-time spatial performance instrument that treats generated 3D not as finished imagery but as matter that stays open to transformation. World Labs environments, Tripo-generated meshes, sampled points and live audio flow into a shared TouchDesigner system, where Gaussian, point and mesh representations can be recomposed through spatial fields, morphing, camera, lighting and optical processing.
Its structure separates three kinds of authorship: generation prepares the material, explicit rules preserve and transform relationships, and performance decides when those transformations happen. Rather than reducing music to beat-triggered effects, Aural Matter treats sound as a field of pressure and stimulus. Low, mid, high and transient signals modulate selected parameters, while the performer keeps control over the world, the representation, the timing and the intensity.
At its center is a tension between continuity and decomposition: a space can be perceived as a coherent environment, then gradually revealed as particles, surfaces, signals and fields without losing its identity. Generated worlds and models are not final assets but material states that can be reorganized, lit and performed. The project also joins generation and performance into one continuous workflow: Tripo and World Labs assets can be generated or imported, normalized, registered in a portable project library and sent back into the live system as playable sources.
An early TouchDesigner prototype called AuralAlchemy, with basic 3DGS display, audio analysis and camera motion, existed before the hackathon. During Tripothon it was substantially rebuilt into Aural Matter, with a restructured architecture, Tripo and World Labs API integration and asset registration, unified Gaussian, point and mesh representations, and a rebuilt live performance interface. It is a gift for spatial creators and live visual artists, proposing that generated 3D should remain unfinished by design: open to interpretation, intervention and performance.
How Tripo was used
In Aural Matter, models generated with Tripo never end up as static assets; they stay playable.
- Generate and import: through the project's API / Services layer, 3D models are generated with Tripo or imported, then enter a shared asset library.
- Prep and normalize: after the Prep / Normalize stage, models can be used as Mesh, Point or Hybrid representations.
- Into the performance: they are recomposed live alongside World Labs spaces and TouchDesigner modules such as Field, Camera, Lighting and Audio Mapping.
