Soundmachines

spectrum

A circular musical spectrum analysis generated by Jon-Kyle Mohr who tells; "A musical tone consists of multiple overlapping sine-waves oscillating at varying rates. This motion graphic represents the isolated frequencies and rhythmic patterns of Ryan York's “If I Am This Forest”. Of particular interest is the swell beginning at 0:45, and multiple simultaneous frequencies which form the single melodic vocal line at 2:05. 

appearance

OLE MARTIN LUND BO

Donuts

This series of prints from graphic designer Michael Cina marks the latest release in an ongoing exploration of the connection between music and visual art, and has us thinking “sprinkle donut minus the donut.” Still, “This is what I feel and see when listening to music,” the artist persists, so we put on some music and look deeper. Dude might have a point, as a good song can feel like a complete circle with its very own depth, dimension and attraction—or, in other words, like a donut.

billio

M i l k ! ?

Amazing experiments, surprisingly often found being tought to primary school childeren, which is quite frustrating as nobody ever informed me about this when I was at school! Moving on, I love the constantly evolving shapes and merging colours that emerge from simply combining milk, food colourant and washing up liquid. In terms of colour and shape it is more than relevant to both, although in terms of sound it bears nothing. This said it, it could be encorporated to our studies quite simply.

I had the idea to work with diluted inks on fairly deep dish plates, influenced by sound resinating underneath and recorded on camera. To apply this milk concuction to this would be straight forward and could again create some fantastic results - definitely something to explore further.

Cymatics

Looking to create our own video response exploring this concept, this video is a really nice example of how sound can be visualized. I love the square format of the video, we were maybe thinking of having a square format for the pack we're going to create as our final response - this square format could feed right through to the videos, poster and booklets we produce?

After recently experimenting with rice and sugar on our own speaker, it is most likely we are going to include a CD/DVD with various little projects of our own in a small pack.

Bonobo

∏

Unfortunately I came across this image without any reference towards designer/studio, but I love the exploration of colour and texture over the same format. I'm unsure as to whether these pieces are zines/posters/boklets or even envelopes? Regardless of the context, it undoubtely produces some really high impact imagery, combining a rather ecclectic colour pallet that works incredibly well.

For this current book brief, Matt and myself are looking to produce a small book/zine, posters and an audio-visual CD wrapped up in a considered pack. We want to combine a variety of coloured and textured stocks to sit in harmony, much like these pieces fluant here.

Kyle Poff

Typographic experiments from Kyle Poff. Massively focused on colour, Poff has worked on the manipulation of type to the point where it almost becomes an exploration into shape, contrasting beautifully against the backgrounds. Less interested in focusing on type for this brief, it is always beneficial to keep exploring different responses to type as image, these being two of my most recently favoured pieces. I'd like to understand the context for the quotes, but nonetheless he's produced some cracking design in my opinion.

wang zhi hong

Taiwan-based Wang Zhi Hong has perfected a minimal (sort of), type-centric, and beautiful style of book design. He's won Taiwan's highest honor for book design five times as well as various other international recognitions and awards.
A selection of some of my most favoured book designs from Wang, the 'how to start your own country' pack immidiately below is almost exactly the kind of format we've been visulizing for our current project exloring sound as shape. The colour and stock choices here are impeccable, in keeping with a lot of his practice Wang is very minimal, using colour as and where appropriate and I think this works so well.

Kerouac

Team

Eploring 'what is a book', the 'TEAM - Process is Form' publication is an example of how the content and readibility of a book can be mixed up to achieve a high impact on the reader.
Picking up the book, it soon becomes obvious that the usual name and author along the spine has been abolished and replaced with the referancing for the content of the book.

The initial pages go straight into the documentation (pure imagery) of print processes/equipment and exploration into colour and shape. It's not untill halfway through the book that one comes across written content, and effectively what could be seen as the title pages, usually found at the front. I love the element of mystery that this adds whilst browsing the inital pages, unsure of what and why these choices have been made.

Definitely a concept to be explored for our own publication, although I highly doubt our book will be worthy of a spine, and will most probably use some kind of simple stitched binding method.

Invite

Dan Cottrell

x shape

GIF's have become a massive interest of mine recently, exploring their use for previous image briefs, I'd love to start producing some abstract shape experiments like these in my own time, or even better if I can encorporate them into my design practice contributing towards module projects.

Working towards the book brief this research isn't entirely relvant, although it is very much focused on the concept of shape and geometry, a massive interest of mine that will continue to grow. 

gamut?

gif'shape

Book

As far as this bookfair brief is concerned, I want to gather a range of context looking at unusual and innovative small book/publications/zenes, alongside reasearch for the main context of the project. As Matt and myself shall be working on this brief together, it is important we both have informed approaches and understand where each of our research explorations have led from and are going to.

I'm excited to get my hands on designing and making mock-ups, working with format, stock, layout and binding methods, but untill we get some design direction I'm going to look into existing examples wherever I can find them.

datamatics

Looking further into the relation between sound and shape, I was lucky to come across the works of Japan's Ryoji Ikeda. Electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda "focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media." Many of his works are live performances and installations exploring the intricate connections that can arise when mathematical equations are applied to sound and image.

datamatics is an art project that explores the potential to perceive the invisible multi-substance of data that permeates our world. It is a series of experiments in various forms - audiovisual concerts, installations, publications and CD releases - that seek to materialise pure data.

 

Colour Organ

"The early history of this art was driven by an interest in color. In the eighteenth century, a Jesuit priest, Louis- Bertrand Castel, invented the first color organ. Others, including D.D. Jameson, Bainbridge Bishop, and A. Wallace Rimington, created color organs through the next century [2].
These instruments, typically controlled by playing a pianostyle keyboard, bathed a screen in everchanging colored light.... Louis Bertrand Castel - CLAVECIN OCULAIRE The French Jesuit monk Louis Bertrand Castel, the well-known mathematician and physicist, was a firm advocate of there being direct solid relationships between the seven colors and the seven units of the scale, as per Newton's Optics.
Around 1742, Castel proposed the construction of a clavecin oculaire, a light-organ, as a new musical instrument which would simultaneously produce both sound and the "correct" associated color for each note. B (dark) violet Bb agate A violet Ab crimson G red F# orange F golden yellow E yellow Eb olive green D green C# pale green C blue

A color organ splits sound into high/mid/low ranges and maps the intensity of each range to a different color on some RGB LEDs. So each sound has it's own color. In short, it makes a color light show based on your music.

s o u n d

Filed

Created by Rainer Kohlberger with sound by Wilm Thoben, field is an abstract audiovisual app that uses realtime camera feed as input. Brightness, saturation and color are interpreted, and translated into a constructed grid. The realtime image triggers different sounds as you pan around. Included are five different modes which you can switch through by double tapping the screen.

Pixel/Wave

From the creator of SunVox and a number of other very interesting apps for the iOS platform, Alexander Zolotov, comes an old school pixel experimental synth for both iPhone and iPad. The app includes multitouch arpeggiator and it is possible to draw waveform and play it at the same time. Simple yet beautiful.

Morph

Buchstabengewitter (letter storm), a generative typography project that transforms three-dimensional linear structures into all the letters of the alphabet. Developed by designer and programmer Ingo Italic the dynamic type display is only the latest experiment out of Letters Are My Friends, a research laboratory he runs together with Bärbel Bold. A place where, as the laser-cut sign outside says, “type meets new technology”.

Horizon

Horizons is an interactive sound toy for the iPhone + iPad which brings together the atmospheric sounds of Eli Murray (Gentleforce) and generative visuals of Lukasz Karluk

Lessons

Soundsh∆pe

As sound is one of the fields of research for this current book brief, it seemed only appropriate to document this concept of sound as shape. Cymatics is the prcess of achieveing shape through sound, more specifically through different pitches played through speakers directly below a chosen substance.

It's quite mind blowing how sound can have such a visual presence, and I'd love to continue to reseach into this concept, setting up personal experiments with the concept. As Matt and myself have chosen to work together on this brief, in order to justify this collaboration a significant amount of work is necessary, and this would be a great way to get some direction and personal progression rolling.

CG

A birllinat source with loads of classic gaming content. It's a shame I've only just found this website, full of vectors, sounds, data, info and the list goes on. As I want to focus in on a few of the main classics for the 60 second intro, the availiabilty of of such sources couldn't have come at a better time! Sorted out all my idents to an extent (I know exactly what is going on in each 4) It's time to get fully cracking with the main 60 second body. I have a fair few ideas down on paper of how the mian content will flow and the artwork is coming along, even more so thanks to these people