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A rework of an earler generative animation built in VVVV with the sound added separately. The original animation was designed to be fully generative, but the recursive nature of sound and graphics tended to send things off in upredictable and often asynchronous directions.

A more curated approach to sound design and arrangement yielded a more satisfying result; found sound recordings and bespoke VCV rack patches were used to create the mechanical percussive chattering, and a minimal smattering of spitfire audio piano and strings was used to create atmosphere.

Track taken from the forthcoming album Sort/Lave to be released 2nd November 2018 on Planet Mu.

Design concept: When I set about constructing the video, I wanted the visual elements to engage the dynamics of the music, it felt like there was something elemental about the acoustic elements, so I starting thinking about about travelling through inner space, sub atomic structures forming and splintering apart and electric flashes of colour. I finished off by dropping in some sci-fi inspired interface elements to give the feeling you’re in a craft traversing a microverse.

 

 

Above is an edited version of the original VR installation rolled out to a panarama and with a more minimal arrangement, music was composed by Giles Lamb then re-arranged by myself. A real-time generative animation reacted to the position of the viewer/listener, as well as the music and other digital entities within the performance. Binaural sound tagged the position of objects within 3d space giving added depth to the experience.

Max Cooper – Cyclic – Official Video by Numbercult

The original concept was to build an animation around the track ‘Cyclic’. The track has powerful layers of complex percussion which producing a building mechanistic intensity. This is counterbalanced with melodic weightiness and a sense of scale, which evolves in waves across the piece. Max pushed the design to include a shift from 2d to 3d, and I conceived of a mechanistic structure that becomes part a sort of (futurist inspired) clockwork solar system (based on the orrery).

Rather have a conventional linear narrative or ‘journey’ I liked the idea of the Schrodingers multiverse. Working on that principle, multiple unique versions of the original system were developed by first duplicating the original solar system multiple times. Each solar system then developed independently; they contain their own behaviours, geometries and relationships, yet all occupy the same space and share a common aesthetic.

The music guides the narrative as we journey between all the overlapping solar systems, the journey is between dimensions rather than across space which I thought fitted nicely with the ideas expressed in the music: deepening but retaining a common hypnotic template. Each of the solar systems is generative; the whole project is recorded in real-time with no post production. Each recording is entirely unique guided only by the rules that govern each component system and its response via FFT analysis and directly from midi triggers and clock

A graphical sequencer where graphical collisions create the percussion. The design follows my interest in trying to mirror the emergent rhythms generated by clockwork machines, Charles Babbages analytical engine provided some design inspiration.

 

Inspired by Cornelius Cardew’s graphical score for treatise and based a seismograph-like method of mapping visual motion to generative musical elements. Human imput was required to ‘shepherd’ and shape the generative composition via a custom made interface. The performance is never fully under control, injecting enough humanity, but retaining generative novely and unpredictability. The perfomance element was inspired by the Dewanatron Dual Primate.

Cities shape us as much as we create them. Part of a series of works exploring the environment as a dynamic form rather than a static backdrop. Neon is inert gas: unreactive, odorless, colourless. Yet it allows the city to be infused with vibrant light and creates shape and definition to its buildings and surroundings.

Generative, audio reactive and recorded in Real-time.

Music is ‘CR Hex mutant’ by Richard Devine on Tiptop Audio Records.

This was shown at the engine room festival, a celebration of the work of Cornelius Cardew . It’s a generative system build in Max/Msp and VVVV, it took Cardew’s ‘Treatise’and selected a granular section based on the graphical interactions on screen, this was then pitch analysed and a a new tonal structure superimposed.  Cardew was a major influence on my graphical style through his graphical scoring system.

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