Looped Patterns of Cars On a New York Highway Translated Into Musical Notes Create a Neat Electronic Song

In “Cars on the Lanes”, a beautiful follow-up video to his “Birds on the Wires“, videographer Jarbas Agnelli of São Paulo, Brazil assigned short musical phrases to looped patterns of automobiles as they drove down a New York highway, resulting in a neat electronic song containing different tracks of lead, bass, drums, synthesizer and claps.

The musical translation of random patterns of nature or mankind. Since everything moves (from galaxies to atoms) and every moving pattern can be read as numbers or notes, then everything contains music. When we cross this with the human spirit, and combine those patterns in a pleasant way, we have the chance to transform them in art. That’s the idea behind this project. On this first test, I used cars on a New York freeway, and choose small loops from several minutes of footage, picking special moments when the elements can be read as interesting musical phrases. No speed changes. No effects whatsoever. Just plain trial and error.