Sound based animation

Len Lye

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1901, Lye developed a style of art based on 'doodling' from an early age, which stirred his interest in the 'pre-rational'.

He was deeply interested in movement and wanted to portray kinetic energy within artistic works; he also drew on aboriginal art, which for Lye again represented a 'pre-rational' artistic tradition.

Tuslava

Walther Ruttmann

A German film director, an exponent of both avant-garde art and music, he became a
practitioner of experimental film.

Ruttmann studied architecture and painting and worked as a graphic designer. His film career
began in the early 1920s.

"Opus I" (1921) and "Opus II" (1923), were experiments with new forms of film expression, and
the influence of these early abstract films can be seen in the early work of Oskar Fischinger
Ruttmann and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriching the language of film as a
medium with new form techniques.

Opus I:

Opus IV:

Stuart Hilton

Born Preston in Lancashire 1965. Studied Graphics at Liverpool Polytechnic and then went onto a Masters at the RCA, Graduating in 1990. Through Arts Council Funding he made Argument on a Superstore (1992) and then “Save Me” in 1994.

His work echoes experimenters from the past in the pre-occupation with sound and image. He is not interested in conveying a ‘different world’ .His drawings are not meant to possess their own sense of life, as he states, “through the process of tracing”. Sound is integral in his work. Seemingly random yet with a sense of drama the sound disparately interacts with the images – “the space between what you see and what you hear is full of possibilities”.

Save Me 1994:

Clive Walley

An artist-filmmaker whose work in animation is understood to be some of the most beautiful and purest expressions of the form.

He has successfully bridged the divide between the commercial and art world with his award winning body of work. He works with a multi-plane rostrum technique combined with oil paint on glass.

Life Study:

Love Song:

Synaesthesia

What is it?

"What colour is the letter "A"? What does the number '1" taste of? Does listening to music, speaking or eating food produce colours, shape or texture? For most people, questions such as these will either yield a look of bewilderment or an emphatic "No!"

Synaesthesia is often described as a joining of the senses. Sensations in one modality (e.g. hearing) produce sensations in another modality (e.g. colour) as well as its own. Synaesthetic experiences are often driven by symbolic rather than sensory representations, such as letters, numbers and words. It is also often experienced in the absence of external sensory input, such as one's "inner speech"."

http://www.uksynaesthesia.com/UKSAWHAT.html

Here's a great animated video that explains the condition of Synaesthesia:

For a while now I've been inspired by the idea of Synaesthesia. Specifically in regard to interpreting music as colour, shapes and other imagery. For the sound-based animation task I decided to experiment with this concept using the song Teardrop by Massive Attack.

I began experimenting in Flash with shapes and colour in time to the beat, the acoustic guitar and keyboard, here's my first try at testing the ideas:

Once I had the ideas together for each element of the track I decided to have a second go at it with better alignment and timing.

To make sure the alignment was better on this one, I created this alignment template in Illustrator:

My final attempt:

My second version turned out a lot better than the first due to the alignment template. I created the layers in Flash and exported them separately with transparent backgrounds for maximum control. I then imported them into After Effects. I created a solid object for the background which I was able to animate for the colour changes. I quite like the ideas in this piece and I hope to develop this idea further at some point.