LAB.Ø

MUSIC / VISUALS / SYNTHESIS / CONCEPT

LABORATORY Ø

AGAINST THE ORDINARY
PROCESS AS PURPOSE

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01 /

VISUAL MATTER

SYNTHESIZER SOFTWARE, UI/UX & GRAPHIC DESIGN. WHEN THE RIGHT INSTRUMENT DOESN'T EXIST, THE LAB BUILDS IT FROM SCRATCH.

ASYNTHESIZER SOFTWARE / UI–UX
P.001

CAROUSEL

MUSICAL SYNTHESIZER SOFTWARE / UI–UX

Carousel is a five-voice round-robin polyphonic synthesizer built around a simple idea: a circle. Its five voices sit like seats on a carousel, and every note you play is assigned to a different one — in sequence, random, or all at once.

Each voice is a complete synth with its own oscillator, filter, and envelopes. Differences in tuning and timbre drift across the stereo field, creating a sound that is organic and quietly imperfect — like an old carousel left in the sun.

Carousel is designed to be simple. No LFOs, no presets, no complex synthesis — just pure play. A childhood that exists only in memory.

DOWNLOAD — GUMROAD
P.002

MORPH-6

EXPERIMENTAL SYNTHESIZER SOFTWARE / UI–UX

Six observed entities share the same communication protocol, yet exhibit entirely different behaviors. The same signal manifests as a different physical reality within each: some proliferate like concrete, forming vast resonant structures; others retain an untamed, primordial roar; others persist as translucent organisms of granules, metal, rubber, and glass, sustained through endless cycles of fracture and reassembly.

The windows are not control panels, but communication terminals. What you see are not parameters, but cross-sections left behind as another consciousness passes through the medium. No label can faithfully translate them. Each algorithm is another point of contact with a different lifeform.

Or perhaps they have simply chosen to borrow our world as a place to be heard.

VI ENTITIES — SPECIMEN INDEX
I. MONOLITH

Two wavetable oscillators, each one's output shifting the other's read phase (mutual phase modulation), with table morphing and a variable frequency ratio between them.

II. VITRINE

A short filtered noise burst excites a bank of ten tuned two-pole resonators with variable inharmonicity, spectral tilt and per-mode decay times.

III. CILIA

Granular playback of an internal sample buffer: grains retrigger at a set rate from a movable scan position, with controls for grain length, position jitter and random per-grain playback-speed variation.

IV. SWARM

Four voices of five detuned pulse oscillators, each running through a resonant bandpass filter, with an independent logistic-map chaos generator per oscillator modulating its filter frequency and pulse width.

V. RELAY

A clocked 16-bit shift register gates three generators — a sine oscillator, a detuned sine pair and bandpass-filtered noise — with ring modulation and global frequency scaling from the pitch fader.

VI. STRATA

Brown noise plus random impulses feed six detuned parallel feedback comb filters, with lowpass damping and saturation inside each feedback loop.

DOWNLOAD — GUMROAD
BGRAPHIC DESIGN
AXIS — Sedative Hard Candies, packaging poster
G.01 — AXISPACKAGING
Plants & Machines — UCLA Sci Art Lab + Studio Summer Institute poster
G.02 — PLANTS & MACHINESPOSTER
Sound + Science Symposium 3.0 — triptych poster
G.03 — SOUND + SCIENCE 3.0TRIPTYCH / 2025

RECENT PROJECT — UCLA SCI|ART LAB + STUDIO SUMMER INSTITUTE · SOUND SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM 3.0 (2025) · FOWLER MUSEUM / CNSI / MATHIAS BOTANICAL GARDEN

02 /

SONIC MATTER

PRIMARILY SHAPED THROUGH ELECTRONIC SOUND — MOVING BETWEEN CINEMATIC SPACES AND CLUB-FOCUSED TOOLS. ROOTED IN FUTURISTIC THEMES, CARRIED BY RAW SYNTH TEXTURES, LINGERING NOSTALGIA & UNDERSTATED EMOTION.

Residual Cycles — album artwork
SELECTED RECORDINGS
T.01 RESIDUAL CYCLES 03:35
T.02 GREENHOUSE 04:43
T.03+ FURTHER SPECIMENS IN PREPARATION --:--

"It doesn't feel tied to any real place, or even to time — as if it's coming from slightly outside the everyday."

REC.001

"MOLECULES" — LIVE STUDIO SESSION

EURORACK ✕ ABLETON LIVE ✕ REAL-TIME VISUALS

SESSION NOTES

"Molecules" is a live recorded studio session combining music and visuals. The arpeggios are made from scratch and tweaked live on the Eurorack modules, synced and sequenced in real-time by pre-written CV notes from Ableton Live, while the drums and synth pads are written and arranged in the DAW.

The recordings from the Eurorack and the DAW play back simultaneously, processed through the effects, and the master bus runs into Elysia outboard processors for final polishing. The audio-reactive visuals are originally programmed by visual artist Alessandra Tagliatti — remixed and arranged in the lab with Max 8 and Ableton Live, under permission, rendered in real-time.

REC.002

GAME AUDIO — DEMO REEL

UNOFFICIAL SOUND DESIGN & MUSIC FOR GAMES

RECENT UPDATES & CREDITS
OST ORIGINAL GAME SOUNDTRACK — RUNRUN BY SPARKNEXA (BY KUAISHOU CN)
OST ORIGINAL GAME SOUNDTRACK — YOLANDA XING: JOURNEY TO THE FORGOTTEN
REVIEW SAMUEL YANG ✕ LIUDICROUS — "POLYMERIZATION" REVIEWED BY CANADIAN DJ / PRODUCER DEADMAU5
CHART SAMUEL YANG AKA YYS — "CONSTANT VALIDATION" BEATPORT'S BEST NEW TECHNO — 2022 TOP 50
SELECTION SAMUEL YANG AKA YYS — "DEBRIS" FORMAVIVA MARCH SELECTION 2021
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THE OBSERVER

A RESEARCH PRACTICE EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS OF sound, visual & interactive design.

Laboratory Ø is the practice of media artist Samuel Yang, a graduate of UCLA Design Media Arts — spanning music composition & sound design, video & animation, game development, graphic / UI and product design.

Sound imagined through visuals, visuals heard as sound, so every experiment feels cohesive and intentional — a futuristic, cautionary tone runs through it all: how technology shapes human identity and culture.

Design is not only about solving problems in the present — it is about shaping humanity in a technological future.

SAMUEL.DDY@GMAIL.COM↗