Written by the composer/producer Daniele Carmosino, composer/pianist Mark Aanderud and visualised by the experimental animator Toni Mitjanit (AKA Spaghetti Coder), Clockwise (2021) is a generative and experimental audiovisual piece that explores the concept of space-time, Zeno’s paradoxes related to the infinite subdivision of the units of measurement of space and time (dichotomy and arrow paradoxes), and their experimental abstract audiovisual representations.
Clockwise, meaning “in the direction in which the hands of a clock move” started during an experimental studio session between Daniele and Mark. During the session they modified the piano adding a layer of tissue paper between the piano hammers and the strings, creating a percussive crispy sound that inspired a very rhythmic improvisation by Mark. That was the base on which Daniele created the rest of the track, recording an opera singer and live horns and manipulating the sound through analogue gear. The track was then mixed and mastered by Juan Ribes at Ribes Mastering.
Later, the Clockwise visuals were generated through creative programming by Toni with the use of different algorithms of recursive subdivision of polygons, motion graphics techniques, computational complexity and randomness, audio-reactivity based on the analysis of the fast Fourier transform (FFT), and a touch of human-machine interaction.
Different geometric patterns emerge chaotically in the audiovisual piece as they are recursively decomposed and subdivided using randomness, noise and data extracted from the audio to determine the polygonal subdivision technique to apply, the color palette to use, 3d transformation properties (position, scale and rotation) and many other visual aspects. In the visual design Toni Mitjanit was inspired by the mosaics of the pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi and the tapestries of Gunta Stölzl and the Bauhaus school, but applying a very close approach to pixel art and visual music.
Neither animation nor edition software were used to create visuals, just an opensoftware video editor @kdenlive for video edition & export. Everything was coded using Java + Processing + Minim library.
Project Page | Toni Mitjanit (AKA Spaghetti Coder) | Daniele Carmosino
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