Audio visual is something I have experimented with before. Linking audio to a visual in one output can be very entrancing.
These are some past examples of audio-visual pieces which I created. I did somewhat focus on over complication rather than simple elegance. I want to this time around, make the sound respond in much more interesting ways rather than in simple but club like forms. Having unusual interactions rather than the expected ones would make a form which viewers are generally surprised by.
Using visuals in the form of shapes which only have any significance when compiled together can be of interest, as well as using imagery which alone forms a purpose. I would like to generate something a little more graphic rather than abstract, maybe in order to imbue the viewer with cognitive thoughts even before their hear or see movement within the work.
George Crumb, Spiral Galaxy (1972)
Albert Bernal, Impossible music #9 (2006-)
Morton Feldman’s Projection 1
Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944): Composition 8 (Komposition 8)
As you can see above, sound can be visualised in very abstracted ways, but music in its own way has a written language with sheet music. Clefs, notes and duration can all be represented in their own way. This allows for audio to be visualised in ways which, although it may seem obvious, may be overlooked as audio visualisation. Kandinsky is believed to have had synesthesia which means senses link together, with sound and smell forming visuals within the mind.
It could be intriguing to generate work which aims to recreate sheet music from audio, like a reverse engineered musical creation.
This video takes this form of approach, forming sound back into an almost readable system. It developes a language with simple sound in the beginning, and then progresses this further and further into a mad, vibrant sprawling landscape of sound once we understand the basic principle.
This video takes a more simple standpoint, chosing flowing shapes. It is fascinating seeing which kind of style better represents the music, as there is no right answer when it comes down to visualising what we hear.
Visual representation, and understanding simple visuals is something we has humans constantly do. Optical illusions work using this idea, tricking our thoughts into seeing faces where they don’t exist, and visualising two ideas from one image. The above video talks about playing upon this visual trickery, forming enticing images for us to marvel at.
I began to test working with a layered image within photoshop. Firstly, I created a vector version of this drawing styled upon the work of Kandinsky. Then I seperated segments of the peice, putting them within diffrent photoshop layers as you can see bellow.
After I had done this, I rotated each layer within after effects, exported this and then used this with the minim library to create generative visuals to go along with music.
This was semi successful but got me thinking. I thought about the sheer number of videos which I had created over my time with digital media. Clips I had just recorded and ones I have heavily edited, along with fully digital screen grabs and animations.
I searched my computer and found nearly 500 clips. I dragged them into editing software and found that there was alomst 8 hours of fottage I had amounted over the past mabye 5 years. Within this many memories were stored with only a few frames bringing back so many thoughts. I wanted to continue with this idea, so I cut each clip so only the first 3 seconds were present and exported this. This still left over 17 minutes of footage.
I then moves this into the same processing sketch using beats to cut between clips completely at random. This left visually a really confusing but intresting visual. Darting around between completely random events within the last few years of my life brought back alot of memories. This made what felt like a very personal visual. I want to take this further with older clips. Many of the tapes I have at home are stored on VHS. I want to convert these into digital format, and perhaps cut them automatically in a similar manner.
This all spawned from the concept of dimensional upscaling. This being the idea of adding dimensions to an existing concept. On the right is a piece by Gerhard Richter where he appears to have added both and second and third dimension to a column of pixels.
The left is a tesseract which aims to make a cube a four-dimensional object. I took these ideas of dimensional upscaling and thought of a way to compile every clip from my computer. This means I can look at a period in my life in a more four dimensional way, rather than displaying everything in a rigid and ordered chronological system.
oogbrain.com 