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:

Narrative Non-Narrative

More of an abstract way to visualize music but still enhancing the viewers senses with the combination of visuals and music is music videos! The aim of music videos are to enhance the viewers experience not just to physically visualize the music, you get see that on windows media player with all its psychedelic waves of colours and patterns. So instead of the direct one to one collaboration with visuals and sound what music videos do is more create a more abstract and almost inspired visuals from the music. For example if the music video has a narrative to it, the video could be what the band/singer is talking about in the song and the video simply displays what he/she is singing about. If the video is non narrative you can play around with what you feel when you listen to the song and with around with different styles and techniques. I will give you an example of a narrative and non-narrative movie video:

This is such a lovely example of a narrative music video, C'mere by Interpol was directed by Adam Levite which putt a contemporary twist on Hansel and Gretel in a snowy forest gives an aesthetically pleasing video.Visually the flames that are in fact fabric add a new interesting level to the video, giving it a softer edge where real flames would have been more aggressive. The fabric flames also tie the band playing with the snowy scene together nicely. Over all the short winter day light has added a gentle tone to the video with subdued colour tones which gives quite a vintage feel 

 A good example of a non-narrative music video is by Franz Ferdinand is "Take me out"

Directed by Jonas Odell. This Swedish director was influenced by the non-art movement Dada for this video. Franz Ferdinand comes from a Glasgow School of Art background and Odell has sympathetically emerged it with a graphic edgy style. Odell used a mixture of filmed performance, animations and green screen.

From the book "Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context" by Carol Vernallis, Vernallis describes music videos as 

"showcasing the star, reflecting the lyrics, and underscoring the music"

Turning music into a story

I came across this absolutely beautiful video today, this lady Alice Ninni has created a story out of the notes that make the music that you can hear, its just such a really cute simple idea but so effective and aesthetically pleasing to watch the progression of the story. Creating a story that enhances the music is a really good idea, it can provoke emotions and the viewer can be taken along with the story.

Maura McDonnell- Visual Music

I did some more research to find more people that are using film/video/motion graphics to visualize music. Maura McDonnell is a very interesting and she also wrote an essay on visual music, but just an introduction to it. It was a really good and interesting read especially at the stage that I am at. It was good just to see the highlighted artists and art work. You can read the essay from here :http://www.soundingvisual.com/visualmusic/VisualMusicEssay.pdf it was very helpful to find out about artists that I had missed in my research so far and was a good starting ground.

McDonnell also has also been involved with some visual music installations/works. One I particularly like is called "silk chroma" (you can view the videos here : http://vimeo.com/silkchroma ).

"Silk Chroma is a fixed media visual music video that employs a technoscience approach to both colour and timbre experience to create a visual music and electroacoustic composition. Silk Chroma can be presented either as a fixed media piece or as an installation piece using a surround sound presentation. A technoscience approach to colour and timbre phenomena provides a basis for aesthetic design. The technoscience approach to the perceptual aspect of colour and timbre is an innovative, non-standard approach to perceptual phenomena which permits a systematic handling of aesthetic issues; issues which are normally excluded from more scientific/technological considerations." (taken from soundingvisual.com)

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/

WHY VISUALISE MUSIC?

So heres the question, why do I want to do this? Well, since doing my experimental video I realized that out of the entire 3 years I have been at uni it was the only module I got some serious passion, drive and want to actually push myself to do something I have never done before. German electronic music artist Frank Bretschneider is a man who also found a passion for visualizing his music. He uses strong visual styles, in particular his live shows in which visuals are generated by the audio output signals, for example, amplitude, harmonic content and frequency. He is described as :

"abstract analogue pointilism", "ambience for spaceports" or "hypnotic echochamber pulsebeat"

What I like when I watch his videos is that the visuals really enhance the audio and the visual really makes you focus and concentrate on the understanding of the abstract sound.

Here is some examples of his work:

This is also the link to his website for more information:

http://www.frankbretschneider.de/Web-Site/about.html

Week 1 drawing class

Week one of drawing class, we had a life model. Its not directly related to what my final project is, but it was just nice to go back to the basics of being an artist..drawing. Getting back to basic rules that helps your development; line, tone, composition, media, aesthetics etc so here is what I got up to in that class: