At this point having started trying to create some initial ideas using the techniques I have seen through my research, I have come to the conclusion that I will be focusing purely on the the rhythm aspect of the song, mainly focusing on the drum beat and pattern. I started by notating the actual drumbeat that is used throughout the song, luckily in this example the drum beat stays consistent from start to end as it is one of the main factors of the song which helps form the backbone of both the audio and the visual.
Originally, when writing this brief, I intended to use this to experiment with mark making techniques but actually looking at ways of representing the visuals and accurately visualising the structure and pattern of the song then more of a mathematical, structured, inforgraphic response would be more appropriate to the outcome I am wanting to achieve. below are a few quick sketches I came up with that got the best response when receiving constructive feedback from a small self made crit group. this example would use different shapes for each voice of the drum kit. 2 bars of the drum beat will be used so it is not necessarily a Representative of the entire song, but the aim would be to use this to visualise the foundation of the song rather than the song as an entirety.
Using DNA style patterns to structure the visuals of the drum beat
This would again just focus on a small portion of the actual song but would be a very visually orientated design.
And in this example I suggested using a similar pattern effect to the first idea but instead of just focusing on a minimal amount of bars, I will use the visual I create to make a repetitive pattern, which will include every beat of the song placed appropriately according the beat and structure of the drums. Technically from following this direction, the listener could follow the pattern through beat by beat from start to finish.
After a trip to the library, and talking to some peers about my creative challenge, it was suggested that I check out the books below, The Data Flow books are full of detailed and creative examples of infographics which have really helped me generate some ideas for accurately visually portraying the structure and physical pattern of my chosen songs.
I have been looking at such designs to try and get influence on both the actually way that I would accurately re create the song visually but also these books were great for inspiring interesting ideas of how I could produce the piece and the possible materials that could be used. The use of shape as a tool and using the space on a page as different measurements is a creative way of forming accurate infographics while also forming really cool visuals which result in pretty attractive outcomes
Colour is a tool which I could possibly utilize as a visual representation of sound, it has been used in many examples of music visualisation, to show different, velocity, tone and pitch, but i believe it would be more difficult to use it when trying to visualise rhythm.
As i have a good understanding of pattern and rhythm in music as i have studied the drums for most of my life, and i am quite able to work out and apply what rhythms are being used in individual songs. For this reason I feel I will probably focus mainly on visualising the pattern and rhythm of a song rather than the song as a whole, this way i can create a more concentrated and accurate representation of the rhythms structure.
I still really enjoy the visual result of using colour in this fashion, however the outcome of this brief is a printed one, and in this instance I very much wanted to apply the designs to different materials and be a little more experimental with the production process, therefore I am going to take this opportunity to use screen print to produce my outcome, therefore i will have to use limited colours (maximum 3 - more realistically 2). which results in colour being quite redundant as the main infographic tool.
The production stage, I also came accross some pretty interesting production processes or possible stocks and techniques I can use. However by screening my final designs it will allow me apply it to series of different stocks and materials to come to some sort of conclusion of what aesthetics both fit the series I will create as well as each individual design linking nicely to the song it is visualising.
I am currently aiming to wards some form of tracing paper print, this is mainly because I really like the aesthetic it creates, especially when interesting patterns are applied. It is something for me to try out and experiment with anyway.
Another Behance project I came accross by Nuria Cabrera In this example, she actually creates patterns for each different instrument and recreates the structure of the song using the patterns she has created, I quite like this idea as you could have complete control over recreating an entire song. She manages to incorporate all the different voices and there timings, so the entire piece exactly recreates the song.
This piece I came across after trawling through behance, but he has kind of followed a trend which I originally thought I would take. He has used powder and a speaker to show the visual response of the powder when the song is played. He has produced this video for the piece but I am more interested in how he has presented his physical products. He has used each frame of film and collated all these stills together to produce the poster,
Taking this concept, he has just applied it to different songs over the same time period and has resulted in a nice looking set which are the same but also completely unique This is the kind of outcome I would like to produce,
He has then taken it to the next level and created a flick book using the frames, this is a brilliant idea as you would actually be able to recreate a printed form of the video, and analyse each frame and how it changes from the previous.
throughout my research I have come across various ways / techniques that previous designers have used to visualise sound from a design point of view, to get an aesthetically pleasing yet accurate recreation. Below are some of the most interesting examples I have come across as well as a link to my pinterest board where I have created an archive of visualised sounds in different formats. Pinterest - Visualising Sound Laughter - By Suzana Basic
This Example by Suzana Basic is really interesting, it was created initially for a video but the collation of all these individual frames creates a really nice poster style outcome. I like the idea that all the sections are different shape and colour and when put together they kind of create a legoesque time line and is unique to the specific song / sound analysed.
I really like the simplicity of this piece, it is focusing mainy on the rhythm of a song which I think is the area that I will aim to focus on as with my experience in rhythm and drums it is an area I have had a lot of experience in and interests me, it also focuses more on clean smooth shapes instead of sound waves based imagery.
I also really like the simplicity of this piece, with using minimal colours and a lot of a space.
Another interesting concept, this uses both repeated shape and colour to represent a song, the patterns that have been created, produce a unique tie ye effect which is free flowing but still very specific to each piece. Again another good use of space.
Rhythm
Another example of a rhythm based piece. these create some very post modernist visuals which are not there to be followed, but rather there to be observed with an audio piece, the clean lines at different lengths and weight really give the feeling of rhythm progression.
Sound Underwater
This example goes back to sound waves more that rhythm but the layout and structure of the the outcome looks really nice, the clear breaks in the audio create frames in a linear fashion which I think creates an interesting visual.
Sound Paper
This is another interesting way of presenting sound in a visual format, this time it is 3D using paper and sound waves as the main tools, but the concept and collation of all the different colours creates a beautiful aesthetic. but i think this would be too time consuming considering the time scale of this brief.
I came across this app that has been developed which visualises individual elements of a song based on either the melody, chord and rhythm. This app is aimed towards people looking to investigate individual elements of specific rock songs but the way they have visualised each element of the song creates a nice link between sound, shape and colour. This would require me to use a music based piece of software such as Logic, so that I can find the shapes of the sound waves that each element of a song creates. This would also mean that I would have to find examples of songs that are still in an editable format, so that I can pick and visualise each instrument that is being played, However it may be worth experimenting with, This was of visualising sound, could be a little too generic though and as my main aim of this brief is to experiment with interesting visual creation techniques.
Directed and created by - US Music by - Benga - 'I will never change' This
is another really unique and impressive example of visualising a song.
This method was obviously created for video format and must have taken a
huge period of time to complete, however the way that they have
perfectly represented the sound waves of the song using a relevant
material (vinyl) to produce it is very relevant to the research I am
undertaking.
This is an example of using a physical product to recreate the unique sound pattern of the song, this would be an option for my brief, to actually physically create my piece out of some form of 3D material and use the photograph as the poster outcome. However i really wanted to experiment with screen print in this brief and this would make it more difficult for myself and would probably result in me resorting to a different print production method.
I found this awesome video by 'The Slowmo Guys' on youtube which shows paints reaction to sound waves, the outcome is beautiful marbled patterns which would be unique to whatever is being played. These forms of image making with sound, would be quite difficult to present in poster format, but never the less the way of creating these unique patterns are unique to each song so would represent each individually.
Here is a brief Youtube video I found from the 60's by Dr. Hans Jenny which shows further interesting reactions to powder and sound waves. He explains (in quite complicated way) why the powder reacts like it does to the sound waves. He also says that ' These phenomena can be re produced exactly at any time, that the factors and conditions of the experiment are known with accuracy'. This means that all these specific patterns can be recreated exactly by re producing the exact same tone and pitched sound wave. This means that technically a recorded song should recreate the same patterns and shapes every time it's played, depending on the volume that it is played at.
I will start by doing research on different existing forms that people have used to visualise sound. I am aiming to find out about as many different techniques as possible so I can experiment with different visual effects and perhaps combine my findings to create my outcome Sound waves and vibrations Source - Gizmodo I came accross this beautiful example of visualising sound waves which is a real time video created by German artist Susi Sie. She uses sounds waves and a special powder called Lycopodium Powder to create this insane looking film.
The way that the sound waves react with this powder is really visually impressive, it is not a typical visual you would expect to come from sound, it is a unique and impressive piece which creates both incredible stills as well as hard to believe moving image.
This is a self written brief, which I wrote as I thought it would benefit both my image making experimentation as well as being a good opportunity to experiment with patterns and visualising rhythm, melody and pitch.
As Music (especially drums) has been a huge part of my life since being a child, my knowledge of rhythm has always been an element which has a strong visual factor, so i want to use that knowledge and apply it to an image based series of posters.
