Written component 1
The process of 100 screen grabs
The project started from my focus on the tool. My intention was to test its limits and possibilities by changing one thing at a time and seeing what happens. ‘What if…?’ was the starting point for each step.
The inspiration, or rather the reference I used, was flock behaviour. The way I tried to resemble it was not simply by observing the movement and copying bit by bit, but rather understanding the principles behind it and recreating the movement digitally by forcing these principles on a group of points.
In artificial, non-existent coordinate system I could play with the dissected idea and use it to shape abstract forms.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.
Verterov, D. (1984) Kino-Eye, University of California Press Ltd., California
Feedback in the class
After recording each iteration, I had over a hundred of 30-60 seconds long videos that needed to be combined together, which forced me to squeeze them to 1 second each in the compilation, for the sake of presentation on tutorial. And the video just asked for a music in the background, so I found a song with the beat fitting exactly the rhythm of changing visuals.
This final step unintentionally gave a completely different character to the project, and was one of the focus points in the discussion. What’s the relation between the sounds and visuals? Did the sound interpret the movement, or the opposite? Can they influence each other? Can I iterate the sound? How does music change the perception of the visuals? All those questions gave meaning to something purely accidental, and at the same time opened a new door, showing another direction of exploration.
Another important point was that the flip side of focusing on the tool is its incidental character, and lacks the main thought, some dominant element. That’s why one of my main tasks will be probably to find this voice that would come through in the project.
Directions
There are several streams of though emerging from the project so far that speak to me the most, and which actually don’t contradict with each other, but could even possibly feed one another.
1. Replicating nature, transferring concepts
This theme goes back to my interest in transferring principles found in nature into architecture. Traditionally, buildings oppose natural forces like gravity, while they could respond to the principles behind them.
(…) we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. (…) The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books: London, England
We don’t normally pay attention and try to understand how everything around us works, but world is a complex system shaped by certain rules that can be understood, reinterpreted and reused.
There are many examples of architects exploring and experimenting with natural phenomena, and successfully drawing inspiration from them for the actual designs. This area of architecture is called form-finding, as the form is ‘found’ by responding to all sorts of natural factors.
(…) the uniqueness of the original lies now in it being the original of a reproduction. It is no longer what its image shows that strikes one as unique; its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but in what it is.
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books: London, England
I think that the relation between principles in nature and architecture below shows how instantly silly fun facts become significant, powerful ideas.
Antonio Gaudi: force models
https://images.app.goo.gl/opGHT6nJUuGmcYqm8
Frei Otto: soap models > lightweight structures
https://images.app.goo.gl/iN8egfJnowepF6wRA
Heinz Isler: ice structures > concrete thin shell structures
https://images.app.goo.gl/kz3vZByrokmDxbJM6
Voronoi diagram in Water Cube olympic centre in Beijing
https://images.app.goo.gl/BiwtFGiM5vEYPraa8
2. Relation of sounds and visuals
This is the topic that emerged in the discussion, and gives my project some new potential ways to develop. Previously I only iterated the visuals and added sound at the end, while it could be strongly tied with the project. The visuals could actually respond to the sound, not just fit to its rhythm.
There are several softwares working with music visualisation, here’s one that I found interesting:
Magic Music Visualiser
It works similarly to Grasshopper that I used in 100 screen grabs – a script consisting of block components which process the input to give certain results. That’s why I am wondering if and how those two softwares could be linked or used simultaneously. Or maybe if principles could be transferred from one to another, that is if I could use Grasshopper like Magic, giving it music or sound as input. Here’s an example of that (with the use of form-finding):
In the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them; their meaning becomes transmittable: that is to say it becomes information of a sort, and, like all information, it is either put to use or ignored; information carries no special authority within itself. When a painting is put to use, its meaning is either modified or totally changed.
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books: London, England
This idea of transforming, almost translating something from one medium to another somehow relates to transferring concepts from nature to design which I touched on in the previous point. Both concepts engage with transferring, interpreting, and recreating. It could be interesting to create an animation using a twofold input – certain principles of movements reacting to certain sounds.
The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. Such authority as it retains, is distributed over the whole context in which it appears.
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books: London, England
The animation would be perceived differently depending on the background sounds, transitions, pace etc. Similarly, the sounds might be perceived differently with various visualisations.
Plan
I would like to use movements based on natural principles as base for music visualiser. There are different ways I could approach it:
- Set the way the visualiser will react to sound and change the music in the background
- Set the background music and change the ways visualiser will react to it
The second option seems more interesting in therms of constantly developing the tool instead of just changing the background. Although I could choose a couple of different songs that I would use as input for each iteration of the visualiser to see if there would be a big difference.