APD W9

By Priyankar Ray

Weekly submission for Week 9 APD

APD W9

Link: https://youtu.be/Ng0HZRzOK1U

Theme: Play & Abstraction

Rationale:

For the week’s theme, I wanted to try a form of abstract animation with a goal. I have had a couple of musicians and artists ask me to make some sort of abstract animation for their songs. They usually want something that doesn’t take the attention away from the music, so that it primarily remains an auditory experience. However, for visual platforms like Youtube and vimeo, they want something that aides the song visually in a more subtle manner.

I hadn’t tried this out for any of the songs, but this week seemed like a good week to play around with this and try something.

The goal is to find a way to make these types of videos for musicians with some rules and parameters but pushing them to be abstract enough at the same time.

Context:

I decided that there will be three main parameters.

Decide colour palettes based on the feel and vibe.
Work on the visual elements based on the story the song is trying to tell.
The abstraction patterns can come from cymatics of some of the notes from the song.

After choosing a song sung by my sister, and produced by a music producer she worked with, I decided to first find out more about the song.

These were some notes about the song from her:

Bhimpalasai is a minor scale raag which this song is in.
It’s meditative and comtemplative.
The electronic bed that forms the base of the track lends it a feel of celestial spatial zone.
The words mean – Calling out to the universe to help us sail through this uncertainty of life as they go towards the sun

Methods:

Once I understood the vibe, feel and meaning of the song, I decided to use shades of Indigo and yellow as they are considered to be meditative colours.

I wanted to bring in a sense of celestial spatial feel to it. I found some images from the field of spatial science, which is the study concerned with measuring, analysing and managing the earth’s surface. The attached images are some examples I found, one of which I used as a sample for the background for it that I could manipulate.

Cymatics is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena. Typically, a surface of a plate is vibrated through sound, and the regions of maximum and minimum displacement are made visible through some particle, paste or liquid on that plate. I tried to do some experiments to create cymatics for some notes form the song but failed miserably as my speakers weren’t equipped for this, and I didn’t have any liquid, paste or particle that could react to the vibrations. But I found the key notes of the song and found cymatic patterns for the notes C, D and Bb respectively.

I used these patterns along with aesthetic of the spatial science background on my ipad and used after-effects to manipulate it.

I then created one circular and one sketchy pattern inside it (to symbolise the sun) in after effects for the imagery and created patterns by manipulating data to react exactly along with the song. I used the information from the audio, similar to the way cymatics work in real life, to create unique and abstract patterns that will react with the highs and lows of the song.

I then overlayed these patterns along with the rest of the composition. I did not put it in the centre of the screen so that it doesn't attract too much attention.

I added a small boat that goes along the cymatic pattern which looks like a river to signify the journey. It serves to show much of the song is done as well.

Response/Reflection:

When Vian gave her presentation for the week, she mentioned something that I put at the centre of this week’s project. She said, ‘I have noticed that a lot of abstract artists derive a lot of their designs from very grounded concepts and ideas’. Even though the final product seems to be very abstract, they are built on the very grounded and real themes.

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you remove all traces of reality.” Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). This quote resonates with what Vian said and I wanted to try and replicate that in this week’s response. I took different elements that could work as visual elements for the song and gave them a twist of abstraction to play with the idea and assets.

The project started as constructive play, where I set parameters and set a goal with a plan. Eventually, there was a lot more of ludic play that went on when I was working on After Effects with all the assets that were created (through procreate and After Effects). That ludic play morphed back into constructive play as I put everything together in Premiere as I had planned earlier.

Working on this for the week has helped me not only develop a workflow for something like this but has helped me find a way to conceptualise how I can go on forward and make something similar for other songs too. The rules and parameters I have created for an exercise or project like this, enables me to create something very different from what I have done before, but with the same parameters and rules.

References