I initially wanted to do the youtube recreation video for project B. I had convinced myself that a stop motion animation was the way to go.
After getting to class about two weeks ago, still without a decent concept, i was convinced that if i couldn't come up with anything reasonably interesting or practical maybe i should be looking at doing something slightly easier technique wise or maybe even one of the other project topics.
In retrospect, im glad i got this wake up call. I decided to ditch the idea of the video and move onto a different topic and work through a range of fresh concepts. I decided to do the data representation. i din't want to use basic data forms, i wanted t work on something more original and perhaps that i had not tried before.
I have a look throught the information on the class' delicious page and found myself looking at Martin Wattenburg's shape of song on smashing magazine.
The basic idea of Martin Wattenburg's data representation was to find similarities througout a piece of music and then graphically track them. For instance:
Jupiter Symphony / Mozart:
Four Seasons / Autumn / Vivaldi:
I really liked the idea of a. learning to read sheet music in order to do this process and b. the idea that music could be converted into graphical form.
The main issues with this process being, how i would represent a piece of music in a form dissimilar to the above and what piece of music to use.
After trawling the internet for music, i was faced with the decision to either use a piece of relatively obscure music picked up from a copyright free websource or reference a famous well known piece.
Ii found the site musonline.com, This site has various recordings of well-known classical pieces that are not under copyright. I choose moonlight sonata by Beethoven. This piece whilst beautiful also uses heavy repition in order to increase the power of the song, thus perfect for what i was looking for.
I found it difficult coming up with a concept to represent the linkage between notes in the piece of music, so i went on a bit of a tangent and came up with the idea of representing the particular note throughout the piece in different colours.
I set up a cubed template in illustrator and used each individual note from the song as a coloured square in the cube.
I came up with this:
I was still not happy with this form as it was relatively unoriginal, plain and unimaginative. I continued to think about ways that i could represent this new information in a concept that not only was exciting but truely represented the piece of music.
Again, on a further tangent, i thoughtabout kaelidoscopes. Not only would it be a great way to represent the data , but it would suit the magnitude and the style of the song graphically.
I built myself a kaelidoscope, and set up the contents to represent the ratios of the different notes in the block representaion. i used a camera to capture the vision and with quicktime managed to convert the still motion shots into a set of active gifs that are a part of the graphical solution.
I really felt as though the solution accurately suggests the volume of the song, its repetition and the period of the style. However this was a little bit out there and perhaps the idea behind it was a little weak? Regardless i decided to see what else i could come up with.
During another unit during the semester (motion) we discussed real time animations. I was amazed by some on the stuff that people are doing, not only coders but graphic designers working with basic code. I thought this might be a strong option for a concept if i could make graphics behave in a certain way under the influence of music.
i searched the net for inspiration and finally came across a technique called sound spectrum display. At
http://gotoandlearn.com/play?id=62 i found a basic tutorial on this technique. The ideas is that the code (flash) reads in the varying byte rates for a piece of music and displays this graphically in a number of ways.
The result of this tutorial was a basic wave form. Not quite what i was looking for.
After playing around for a fairly long time i was able to combine elements from a number of sources on the internet into an original solution that mapped the highs and lows of the musical piece in a simple yet, crisp and classy way.
i really enjoyed this project. Not only was a under pressure in the end to come up with some effective concepts but there was so much scope to all of these pieces.
In the end i developed a number of solutions for the problem, that were all quite effective in their own way. I learnt a lot about flash, basic coding and photography as a result of the various techniques i experimented with. In summary i think that i not only developed an excellent solution to the project, i also demonstrated an ability to think outside the square in response to a brief, which i am really happy with.
I wouldn't change anything that i did during the project, apart from maybe starting a little earlier with stronger concepts.
regards
