Clavilux 2000 - Interactive instrument for generative music visualization

I have just came across this beautiful piece of visual music. I love the reference to the color organ (previously discussed in 1st semester and lit review) and through just the use of colour it has been created, no fancy frills. just lines of colour representing each note, the length they are played and the pressure in which they are played.  Here is the description for a better understanding:

"The Clavilux 2000 is an interactive instrument for generative music visualization, which is able to generate a live visualization of any music played on a digital piano. The setting of the installation consists of three parts: A digital piano with 88 keys and midi output, a computer running a vvvv patch and a vertical projection above the keyboard.

For every note played on the keyboard a new visual element appears in form of a stripe, which follows in its dimensions, position and speed the way the particular key was stroke. Colours give the viewer and listener an impression of the harmonic relations: Each key has it's own color scheme and "wrong" notes stand out in contrasting colors.
All stripes stay and overlap each other in an additive way, so at the end a kind of pattern remains – a summary of the music – which will be always unique since the notes of the composition aswell as the interpretation of the piano player are influencing the outcome. Furthermore the piano player can switch between the standart 2d view and an additional 3d view of the visualization while playing."

Clavilux 2000 - Interactive instrument for generative music visualization from Jonas Heuer on Vimeo.

NEON- 100,000 Lux

WOW! Tonight was amazing! I am so glad Lynn mentioned this to me, it was great! Ok, so what was is it? Well it was a wacky combination of science, visual art, and sound design! Sound cool? They used the side of Abertay University which has a light system already built in to the exterior. The audio was in control of the visuals generating a colourful, bright and an equally engaging piece for the eye and the ear. What is really interesting is that this artwork was created by data collection from the solar dynamics observatory which programmers erin michno and ian reynolds used to create the spectacular visuals. Also involved was lecturers David Mactaggart and Antonia Wilmot-smith (Dundee University). The audio was created by Raz Ullah who is currently at Abertay studying his masters in sound design. The audio is very unique to say the least, I hope not to offend when I say that it reminded me of the old dial up tone you used to get when connecting to the internet. But as a whole it was very engaging for the eye and ear; the visuals where interesting and in sync with the audio. It had a very alien/spacey vibe to it which is what I really like about it as its inspirations/data technically originates from space so I think its quite cool that it gave off that effect. Over all I thought it was a brilliant exhibit of people from lots of different fields working together and taking something mathematical and numerical into something very beautiful

Here is a picture from Neons facebook page of the event ( I took videos and will upload them later)

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.517611701584027.121679.250366684975198&type=3&l=7e4b453583

Here is the video that I took (time lapse)

Oil and dye- media tests

After my tests with water/oil, it got me thinking about using different liquids with dye, so I whipped out the cooking oil from the cupboard and WOW! honestly, the results I got from this studio session (in my kitchen) was amazing! Basically at first I was just playing around with dropping it in, and because the oil was heavier, it was holding the dye in place here is some videos of the tests starting off...

First of all, pouring in the oil, wow, it was like particle effects that people actually try and make in after effects it was so cool, I think i might try and use this footage in daniels music video as it would be really cool as an effect on top of another video (see a post in the next few days about daniels video)

What was really cool was that when a drop of oil was poured in, little parts came off and floated up and down and it gave like something you would see in a desktop screen saver, it was so aesthetically pleasing, little bubbles of colours floating around.

(video of knife and oil)

Then as the dye kind of settled, I though " hey this is no fun" so I got a knife and started swirling and irritating the dye so it had more movement in it. The results where amazing and I could hear a kind of "swoosh" noise is my head, so I went and sourced a "swoosh" noise and here is the result 

I think it works pretty well, the timing was quite hard to get as I was working in after effects but its still a good attempt.

I then decided to add water and see where that could get me, It was so funky looking, the water sat on top of the dye almost and it gave the video more of a 3d dimensional feeling, there was a foreground of smaller bubbles and a background of large bubbles.

Then I decided to play around with the lightening as it was getting harder to see what I was doing because of the dye

Then things got a little bit messy, not sure if Im happy with the next part, but still- trial and error..

Anyway, I feel this studio session was the best yet, it has really inspired me, keep a look out for more cool stuff to come :D

Glass and water media tests

Some more media tests here for you. Ive always liked the dye in water idea so I thought I would just give it a go myself! I played around with different colours, Size of glasses, movement (washing machine).

These are just some screenshots of the videos. When I was playing around with the glasses on the washing machine, something AMAZING happened, the glasses started dancing around and moving all over the place, THEN two of them clashed into each other, and it was like a little jingling sound, it was so amazing. I thought " wow this is a really cool way to visualize the sound that a washing machine makes" So I think in the near future, there will be some more tests on washing machines!

Rice and dye media tests

Seeing as last year I put a ton of things on a bass speaker, I wanted to experiment with the things that I used and put them to use in different ways to make up different ways of movement. Seeing as rice was quite a significant item I thought about using it as a way of movement but not in the rice moving, but enabling something else to move through it, this is the results I go, they are pretty cool! But anyway, take a look at this video showing what I'm talking about...

Textured songs

Ive been listening to quite a lot of songs, varied in everything you can think of, from old jazz to songs like these:

I LOVE the introduction to this song, it is full of texture, layers, movement, tone, rhythm. The introduction has really inspired me to create something quite textural in the way of a video for the introduction. I've also been really inspired by how Beardyman's video "monkey jazz" has been created. During the song, as Beardyman builds up the song he uses visual cues like hats of sunglasses to distinguish between each layers of the song. He also uses colour in the background to distinguish the different layers as well as hand gestures, movement of the videos that copy the movement of the song. Even better when the sound is defused, the images too become fuzzed to further represent how the song is working. The graphical style that has been applied to the overall video ties everything in so well. I cant describe enough how much I really love this video due to the way the video has added so much to the music and it stimulates both the ear and the ear. You can appreciate so much more as to how a song like that has to be built up in layers and the technicality put into it.

Here it is in all its glory for you to make your own mind up!

Leopold Survage

I've been reading up about Leopold Survage and his "Colored Rhythm" work. Its really interesting  due to the era that Survage was in. Survage was a painter but he was restricted by the canvas in which he painted on. In music, there is no limit to space, it is free, no limits unlike the edge of a canvas, the painter has to stop.

I read this from this article by Samuel Putnam entitled " Leopld Survage and the spatial problem in painting ". (can be found from here : http://rhythmiclight.com/books/TheGlisteningBridge.pdf).

What I am finding out more and more is how similar music and moving visuals are. Through characteristics like colour, form, rhythm, movement, harmony, repetition, dynamics. The list goes on and on. What Survage did was he created a huge array of paintings that he intended to animate, these paintings played one after one  so that you could see a beautiful array of free flowing colours, as free as music, clashing, colliding and bursting of the page. Survage solved his problem of space but unfortunately he could never see the final outcome due to the war. Thanks to youtube, someone has put all of Survages paintings together and we can really understand what Survage wanted to express. 

When I watch the video I kind of feel like I'm watching a bird be freed for the very first time. You can see the freedom that Survage must have felt when he was finally no longer restricted to a canvas.

Week 2 drawing class

This week for our class drawing class it was my turn with a fellow classmate to make the still life set up, as we where both interesting in video and photography we decided to make a moving set up. We used a multitude of textures, materials etc and used a fan to get movement out of them. Realistically we needed more than one fan but we had to work with what we had. I took multiple videos and still images, trying to capture the movement of the materials. I have the raw footage that still needs edited and I am going to use the footage I took to use for tutorials to expand my knowledge on after effects as previously I have only used final cut pro so I think it would be an advantage to have experience in both. So for now here is so imagery of our set up, videos will follow soon!

Oskar Fischinger

A genuine pioneer in this field. I don't even know where to begin there is so much to talk about him!

Lets start at the beginning...

Not even joking, my mind feels like information overload, there is SO much to look at!! So I was trying to look at so much stuff and I was just confusing myself so I am just going to start at the beginning, making a timeline of significant people, ideas and projects so my mind can work better! OK....

Around 1742 (1725 when the idea came about) - The first "colour organ" designed and constructed by Louis-Bertrand Castel. It was a stringed instrument with moving transparent and colour tapes. It used seven colours which tied to the seven whole notes.

In relation to Castel's "organ machine", as I was doing research into his colour association with music notes, I started finding out how it has changed and different people take on it. Here is a chart which visualizes the past three century's debate on which colour goes to which note, its quite interesting!

Looking more into colour theory I started looking at the association with colour to emotions. As I will be doing a visual piece I have to be ever aware of colour association how that maybe the viewers feelings can be manipulated. Here is an example of "standard" colour association:

Daft Punk- Anatomy of a Mashup

This is a really really cool idea that basically visually shows the different layers of one of Daft Punks mashup. What is so great about it is that it shows you the complexity of what it take to layer and build up this song and with a clever colour coded bar at the bottom you can see when layers come and go. Not only does it show you have the audio track was built up but it has also created a beautiful visual art piece that is stunning to watch as the track builds up the layers, its defiantly something to go have a look at for yourself as I am not doing it any justice by just talking about it.

http://daftpunk.themaninblue.com/

Michal Levy- Giant Steps and One

Michal Levy is another person that has Chromethesia. What he has done is made animated videos that visualize what he sees when he listens to music so we too can understand what goes through his mind while listening to that particular music. I think to use a condition that not many people have an turn it into a creative outlet is so wonderful and his videos are full of colour shapes and fun. This is what he has said on his website:

"I see music. As i hear it, it appears. Music for me is a gateway to a synesthetic 3D space full of shape-shifting colours and textures. In my music-animated films Griant Steps and One I invited you to join me on a colourful journey into music"

This is the story board of his video "one" and below is the final piece

Here is another great example of his work

Synethesia/Chromesthesia- Very interesting!

Yesterday I got out a very interesting book called Digital Harmony: On the complementary of music by John Whitney and I was reading a section titled "The Role of Color and The Role of Music" which talked about colour association with sounds. Interested about this idea, I started  researching it further and I found out that  Synethesia is a neurological condition which means that when one sense or cognition involuntary triggers another. There are many different types of Synethesia but the one I am interested in is called Chromesthesia which is the term for someone who can "see" colour when a tone is sounded. So essentially these people are doing automatically what I am trying to create for my honors project! This could be really interesting if you got someone who had Chromesthesia and played them a track to which they described the colours the "saw" and you could make a video by what colours they saw, that would be a cool test study!