audio flash experiments

These are a series of flash actionscript experiments using the microphone input option within flash, there is also a motion detection option but the coding is quite complex. this one is dead easy and by using simple movieclip controls you can be very inventive.
These ideas were for video installations in a Nike store, as people move around the graphics react to the ambient sounds. Microphones (peizo discs) could be placed on wooden floors to react to footsteps and vibrations.

here are the links (i recommend you mute your speakers to stop feedback)

you be asked to let flash connect to your mic, dont worry its nothing dodgy

bendy shoe grass
bouncing logo
spinning shoe wheel with looped video background
shoe spread
audio controls the video speed
a constant sound will play the video
sound reacting shoe rain
blow to see the football boot

find out more about the code here

VJing documentary

CTRL ALT SHIFT - from V.I. Artists on Vimeo.

norman perryman

I came across norman many years ago from a work colleague who was norman's brother in law. Normans work as seen in the video below is as an artist who performs live with musicians, creating live paintings during performances. he's a kind of lowfi VJ and kinetic painter.

VJing is another from of creating visuals for music, mainly for live performances, it maily work by artist creating loops of animations and video to play in sync with club music.



a great example of vjing graphics is when tomato the london design firm teamed up with Underworld and created visuals for their live tour

other useful resources

here's a timeline of practitioners exploring the visualisation of music

An exhibition at MOCA on visuals and music in 2005

an exhibition at the pompidou in 2005

another exhibition in 2005

A Brief History of Synaesthesia and Music by Sean A. Day

This is a very good indepth article on the history of visuals and music

it discusses many of the composers who created rules for colour coding notes and keys such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov who created this chart below

B major gloomy, dark blue with steel shine
Bb major darkish
A major clear, pink
Ab major greysh-vioket
G major brownish-gold, light
F# major green, clear (color of greenery)
F major green, clear (color of greenery)
E major blue, sapphire, bright
Eb major dark, gloomy, grey-bluish
D major daylight, yellowish, royal
Db major darkish, warm
C major white

http://www.thereminvox.com/article/articleprint/33/-1/5/

it also touches on more recent musicians who have explored this area, miles davies, Sofia Gubaidulina and Michael Torke, are but a few of the people who see this link.

More examples of visuals and sound/music

chuck jones

Came across this very nice original animation by Chuck Jones the master animator, a great example of visuals and sounds working together

Chris Casady

Chris Casady is an animator who i first saw at the flash foward conference in London in 2000, he was using flash to handraw animations synced to music. he is a real master of the physics of animation, he has been doing a wide range of pieces in relation to music for quite a while now, you can see some here on his website www.naptime.com

pencil drawing video


scribbles

Find more videos like this on The Visual Music Village

sweeping

Find more videos like this on The Visual Music Village

Ma Book Project

Ma Book Project
Originally uploaded by andy pearsall

Ma Book Project

Ma Book Project
Originally uploaded by andy pearsall

Ma Book Project

Ma Book Project
Originally uploaded by andy pearsall

double page design for a coffee table book that also has a flash storage device in the spine to update itself using the web 2.0 community.

Ma Book Project

Ma Book Project
Originally uploaded by andy pearsall

double page design for a coffee table book that also has a flash storage device in the spine to update itself using the web 2.0 community.(this image does contain altered stock imagery)

Previous ma project - title sequence

Heres the final piece for my title sequence project, its based on the book Gormenghast. Crows seemd to come up quite a lot in the book and on various designs, so i incorporated them inot the sequence. not quite what i had in mind but i spent a lot of time looking for the right footage, which i was never really happy with. i am though happy with the final piece.

Gormenghast title sequence from andrew pearsall on Vimeo.

UP - sound in animation

Another insightful short film about how sound was created for the new pixar film

"UP" Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo

more examples of sounds used in film can be found here (great resource)

tetro

This is great short piece on sound design

"Tetro" Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Music

I'm looking for some music to create visual to, i didnt really want to choose something i already knew and i will have too many preconceptions about the piece. I the real world you dont get to choose your product. I was also looking for something different that perhaps has many changes in tempo and rhythm, i may not find any one piece ideal so i may create a number of short compositions to various pieces of music and sound, perhaps even random.
Anyhow i asked my worldwide network of friends on Facebook and they supplied me quite a few artists to listen to.

delicious - bookmarking tool

I ought to link to my delicious site as i tend to post a lot of research under there for the project
check out http://delicious.com/andypearsall/maresearch

Hukkle (2002)

Hukkle is a film i came across on Sky arts, a hungarian film made in 2002 contains almost no dialogue. Its a nice example of how the care and attention to soundfx and image can create a piece thats just as compellinga s film with dialogue.
here is a short clip

Painters - influenced by music

Paul Klee was a musician and painter and he explored music through some of his paintings
"After returning home, Klee painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan (1914), composed of colored rectangles and a few circles.^[24] The colored rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other colored blocks to create a color harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular color palette emulates a musical key. Sometimes he uses complementary pairs of colors, and other times “dissonant” colors, again reflecting his connection with musicality" wikipedia









In the Style of Kairouan (1914)



Kandisnky was even more so influenced by music and during the bauhaus period(1922-33) is when his music influenced style started to evolve

"Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in his teaching as well as in his painting, particularly circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves. This period was a period of intense production. The freedom of which is characterised in each of his works by the treatment of planes rich in colors and magnificent gradations as in the painting Yellow – red – blue (1925), where Kandinsky shows his distance from constructivism and suprematism movements whose influence was increasing at this time."

Later on in the mid thirties he began to create pieces such as the one below called "Composition X, painted during WWII. (Kandinsky 1939)"















"Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with the strings."

Director - Simon Willows

This is the work of Director Simon Willows, Simon was a student (final work here) at UCE now BCU in the late 90's when i was working there. He a very talented young man who has created some very witty work and has moved into creating very clever films using relatively simple techniques such as chromakeying and puppeteering.



The making of his macdonalds advert



Slob evolution



Volvic Ad



I may send him a few questions regarding his work in the industry and the process's he goes through over the next few weeks. watch this space...

Lenny Kravitz - If You Can't Say No Dir. Mark Romanek

Mark talks about this video on his DVD, which have the whole series for and will post some of the various directors work on the blog. I chose this one for the beautiful lighting used, wonderfully moody.

Closer - Nine Inch Nails Dir. Mark Romanek

This is a Music video by Mark Romanek, who has a talent for cinematography, his work always looks beautiful, he used an original edison movie camera for this video to give the old style look. Its a cross between the photographic work of photographer joel peter witkin and animator Jan svankmajer. very dark and disturbing.

Dancehall Places - Dir. John Hall

I Had to put this one up as it shows what you can do on a tiny budget with only one or two people involved. One of my students produced this for his Masters project (I was his personal tutor at the time). Its a lovely piece combining photography, studio shots and live performances from the dancers. The mirrorball is mine which i helped shoot and assisted John on the couple dancing shots, either being cameraman at times or guiding the spotlight. It was edited in Avid and graded on Avid as well. Nice work John!

Synesthesia

Came across this video whilst seeting up my vimeo account today, lovely rich colours used, beautifully shot and very witty.

Synesthesia from Terri Timely on Vimeo.

Major Project

In case you havent realised what the project is yet, here it is

Visualizing Sound / music

My aim is explore the relationship between sound/music and visuals.

Music has been an integral part of society for thousands of years, man has also associated images with the rhythms and beats through many forms, mediums such as dance, painting, costume, architecture, photography and film have been used to express the emotions felt whilst listening to the beats of a drum or the delicate notes from a flute. Painters such as Kandinsky, animators like Norman McLaren and film director David lynch have had a fascination with the blending and creation of visuals based on sound and music, not forgeting the more mainstream music videos and Video Jockeys in nightclubs who live sample visuals and display them to the rhythm immersed audience.
My intention is look into the history of visualizing music (animation, painting, graphics, film, vjiing, music videos etc) and to create a range of visual experiments that will lead up to a short film / motion graphic piece that will visually express the accompanying music/sound.
The project explores the design fields of motion graphics and film.

Objectives
Explore and analysis the history of this medium
Experiment and create a series of pieces in reference to the research and through ideas generated for the brief.
Create a final short film ( or possibly an interactive piece ) that realizes my research and ideas development.

michel gondry

Michel Gondry is genius music video director, he works a very visual way, exploring what seems to be very simple ideas but are executed to perfection.

This chemical brothers music video for star guitar, is a wonderful example of editing and visually exploring music.



the making of video



The white Stripes Hardest Button to Button promo video, again a simple way to layout the rhythm and beats in a track



Björk - Declare Independence, gondry exploring visuals (inks on string) generated from the music, nice use of physical objects. i do however prefer the paint piano which can be seen under this video.

paint piano

Disney's Fantasia

Disney also created a full length animation inspired by music with the film "Fantasia"(1940).
here are a few examples below
flowers

Mushrooms - animator Oskar Fischinger


The famous mickey mouse piece ( originally it was intended to use Dopey from snow white)



This is a lovely example by Oskar Fischinger of visuals responding to the music

coldcut & hexstatic "Timber"

This superb music video was created by Coldcut & Hexstatic who at the time were creating innovations in music and interactive media. this piece was created by sampling sounds from videos and then creating a track, the final piece was then synced back to the original visuals.



Coldcut & Hexstatic - Natural rhythm
slighty different example, this one looks more like the visuals were added later

The Critic - Norman McLaren

Whilst looking at McLarens work i came across this humorous look at Modern Art, it did make me smile. I do think that sometimes we over analyse some work, sometimes a pretty picture is just that.. a pretty picture.

Here is another called "Synchromy" which is synced exactly to the sounds, i do however find this a little overlong and repetative, but that i suppose is the nature of the music. In this day and age of the MTV Genereation ( which i am one of ) we soon become visually bored and want to move on, its part of interactive click away, remote control culture (perhaps we have too much control).


I much prefer this one which was made earlier "Dots".

Norman McLaren - neighbours

Norman McLaren is an animator who created an amazing body of work that explored stop motion animation, He always springs to mind when thinking about the synergy of sound & visuals.
This is his most famous piece called "neighbour's (1952)" which explores the futility of war & greed. Its a good example of how the sound can enhance the rhythm of visuals.


This next one is called "Boogie doodle" and is a great example of sound and visuals working together.

whoops

Sorry (not that anyone is looking at this), i'm on my major project now and i didnt post anything about my projects. so the next few posts will be a quick overview of what ive done upto now and then i'll keep a record of the research done on the final major