the music of sound

According to the youtuber who uploaded this clip, “In the 70’s, Rainer Wehinger created a visual listening score to accompany Gyorgy Ligeti’s Artikulation. I scanned the pages and synchronized them with the music.”

quite beautiful!

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by videos22

by Jemapur

Nicely cut/composed!

Soundscapes – by Ace Norton from IE HAGY on Vimeo.

The ffffound site is one of my favourite visual inspirations – basically it works like delicious except people tag images there instead of bookmarks… Heres a few recent funny/great images tagged there:

And for some visual humour, I’m a fan of the xkcd site – heres a great example:

Is Mario dancing to the music? Is the beat unrelated to the action? is my mind subconsciously trying to glue the beat & music to the action (& instantly forgiving it when its a little late? hah! its dub! its all a little late – just how we like it!)

Similarly I love this old Gondry music video for the Chemical Brothers ever since I first saw it; simply because it was like deja vu ie sitting on a train with the ipod cranked up with beats & the trees/power poles etc start hitting sync points… you blink & snap back to the here & now & ask yourself: ‘are they really syncing up or is my mind playing tricks on me?’

“Every sound from the track will be illustrated by an element of the landscape that appears each time that sound is heard. As the song becomes more elaborate, we will create a more and more complex landscape.”

But the funny thing with sync is that sound post newbies talk about being ‘frame accurate’ in terms of spotting/syncng their sounds, but what is a frame? at 24fps, one frame equals 41.67ms which is a LOT when you talk in terms of music. Its like changing genres: the snare drum in rock music is ON the beat whereas the snare in reggae is often late/dragging the beat… So between frame 01.00.00.01 and 01.00.00.02 is a whole lot of ‘feel’ and genres of music… so dont ever tell me you are ‘IN SYNC’ just because the sound you cut is on the boundary between picture frames! Despite all that it still might not ‘feel’ right – its like a cadence… There is also a funny human perception, that says a sound early in sync feels very wrong, but a slightly late sound seems kind of ok/not wrong, which is I guess related to our perception forgiving the scenario of hearing a real sound out of sync. I can still vividly remember seeing/hearing a sound effect out of sync: watching a pole driver slamming into a big pole that was part of a wharf. I could clearly see the point of impact, but the sound took many frames to reach my ears…. What is ‘correct’ sync?

Dont try this at home, but you can buy it on ebay – a circuit bent TV! The youtube vid doesnt do it justice…

If you do have the skills to work with high voltages, theres more info here for the Censtron Wave Vessel… Heres another circuit bent TV, bent via the same process:

First with the advent of CDs & then downloading many people have been mourning the death of LP size artwork & while I still believe we haven’t seen even a fraction of the potential of embedded artwork there is no denying the 12″ LP is a unique format for design. The added challenge for designer nowadays is creating memorable artwork that can scale, from a tiny ipod screen through to CDs and still in some cases LPs…. Some net labels lead by example with embedded artwork, for example the thinner label include both static & animated digital artwork with their downloads & when you consider the small file size of graphic images vs the music files it is hard to understand why any company selling music downloads does not include at least a copy of all the artwork that would accompany a CD release… Sleevage is an interesting blog about music cover art, but a post specifically about the future of album artwork on the Design Observer blog: Are JPEGs the New Album Covers? generated a lot of interesting comments & links and is well worth a read…

If like me you already have a drive full of music most of which has no attached artwork there are many ways of reattaching artwork – there is a wiki here explaining the process of getting artwork for itunes & ipod, but I have found Dougs AppleScripts site here to be an excellent resource for automating the process…

As the year grinds to a hault, many journalists & bloggers get busy generating ‘best/worst of the year’ lists & of course album artwork inevitably joins those lists, so check out Pitchfork 20 Worst Album Covers of 2008 here and Brain Pickings Best Album Covers of 2008 here. But as far as lists go, album artwork is an easy target – a quick google search rapidly provided; the 28 Weirdest But Most Enticing Album Covers of All Time here, Grupthink best albums of all time here, Smashing Magazines 35 Beautiful Music Album Covers here but the most common (& amusing) lists are often of the supposed worst artwork such as this site or this or this or this or this

There is also an entire subculture of manipulating existing album artwork – Sleeveface is the most immediate example, theres a good interview with the person who started that meme at pingmag here and check the mini-documentary below:

B3ta held a competition with the brief being to extend album artwork & some of the results are genius!

And of course the LEGO subculture became involved, in one case recreating 20 classic album covers and in another recreating classic hip hop album covers

Lastly, this video is possibly the cleverest use of album cover artwork yet. Having the idea is one thing but implementing it quite another!

Its not often a software v1.0 release is celebrated by the users – historically it often means its been rushed to market & will be buggy as all hell, but it would seem the opposite is true of the release of Processing 1.0 which has undergone a lengthy development period in the hands of many very clever visual & audio artists…

So what is Processing exactly? “Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well.”

For any artists, choosing tools is critical, especially when those tools have a serious learning curve… Choosing to learn ProTools, or ableton LIVE or Logic is challenging enough, but then choosing whether to pursue more open-ended audio programming environments such as Max/MSP, Kyma, Reaktor etc adds another whole realm of complexity. And that is where Processing has achieved a quiet revolution. Re-read that description: “since 2001….” – its now near the end of 2008; thats a long time in beta, but the evidence speaks for itself.

I remember on my first trip to Tokyo back in 2004 visiting the fantastic ICC Gallery and getting to play with an audio visual generative toy by the name of SONIC WIRE SCULPTOR (it was created in Processing by Amit Pitaru) & below is a video of it… but you can also try it in your web browser here

Another example of Processing I recently read of in pingmag is a very interesting project called Advanced Beauty: “Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects.”

Read the full article here, find the Advanced Beauty site here & check out the trailer for the DVD release below:

Advanced Beauty / Out Now from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

As with any creative medium (or artist), the best advertising is created through inspired works of art being made & I find the work of one of the artists featured on Advanced Beauty to be truly inspiring; namely Robert Hodgin, who’s flight404 blog documents development of his work.

Here are just a few examples of his work with Processing (note – go to vimeo to view in HD)

Audio-generated landscape from flight404 on Vimeo.

Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.

Short Royksopp experiment from flight404 on Vimeo.

Check more of his videos on vimeo here

Are you the kind of person who likes to watch the making of before the ‘real’ thing? If so watch this, then that… or if not, vice versa…

All I can say is (a) I’ve never bought anything by them (b) I may never buy anything from them (c) thanks for entertaining me, briefly but I’ve already forgotten what ‘it’ was (d) why cant companies such as these fund art for its own sake, and discover a whole new market who are impressed by the virtue and the creativity possible by… oh shut up internal monologue – its advertising! end of story…

the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre
the filthy lucre

Sorry I’ve been away up north for a few days holiday & to meet a director of a (possible) film for next year… will post a few photos of where I went soon, but for now watch a cute anthropomorphic synth animation:

Two boxes were waiting for me when I got back – one rather large box from VEIMA with a Doepfer G6 rack, a few modules + that circuit bent collection I mentioned previously… mmmmmm…

The other box was from Analogue Haven – WAHOOOOO! So I now have my long awaited Livewire AFG oscillator, a FrequenSteiner Filter, a TopTop Z3000 Oscillator, a Doepfer A132-3 dual VCA and two A185 bus access so I can link the bus between the two G6 cases that all my modules are moving into… Christmas arrived early in this neck of the woods!