Please view below the creative process.
CREATIVE BRIEF
I decided to collaborate with a classical music composer Hannah Varty from, because I was very inspired by her "Chromaticity" piece for 12 saxophones. This a photo of Blackheath Halls were her piece will be performed.
The first thing was that we met up and had a sort of interview about her music, inspiration, her thoughts about visuals, the process of how she writes her music.... This was a great creative brief and vital information for me as a designer to understand what is her music about and create right visuals for it. I wanted the composser to be closely involved in the creative process. So here is the script from our conversion about "Chromaticity"
Chroma is a color. In music something that is chromatic means using the whole spectrum of notes available, which technically my piece it’s not a descent sounding piece, because I used lots of notes clashing together, it’s not like that, but it’s trying to portray color in music it’s in a sort of abstract way, it’s abstract... Partially I was inspired by color of landscapes. I always like to use color in a music in terms of the sound of the instruments so making the most out of instruments you got. So color would be a meaning of sound variations. In orchestra (the sound is very broad, because you have so many sounds coming from different instruments) the color is very rich and that’s what I kind of trying to make with the instruments in my music And because the changing landscapes was kind of an influence, i think the word “Chromaticity” meant a lot in that term quiet as well. For example one day when I was coming back from Birmingham and this was in October, was weird, it snowed, quiet heavily and the whole country side probably like in an hour was white...The train was going through rural landscapes. It was weird that in an hour i was going from autumn to winter. And the trees in the park were changing their color. So that was kind of CHROMA-color type.
The piece has the beginning and the end section kind of the same. The middle is a very short passage, where you get a sumptuous harmony, still when I hear it makes me go kind of weird, funny, makes me shiver. The beginning and the end I suppose is this kind of relentless drive, that keep moving and moving and .... one of my things was the Greenwich park, or any other parks in London are in some aspects really nice places to go, they got greenery and trees and when you go on Saturday or Sunday is so full of people, and that kind of natural environment doesn’t seem natural at all, because it’s been taken by people. People are sitting on every part of the grass and feeding the squirrels. The same space could be so different and changing. So really I think those 2 sections, it goes to this relentless drive, the people, people in the city, people in the space doing what they always do. But that middle section is much more, a glimpse of natural, the excitement of the natural things that are happening, when nobody is around, but it only last for a short amount of time, because that’s not real, because that’s not what happens in a city, in a place where are humans, because we take over. and it doesn’t last it goes straight back to chaos. And these ideas are kind of just, you know, they are not precise in any way, that’s just kind of that is just over all feel, over all thought process and that was put in a music in a kind of abstract way. It’s good if you hear the music and get that kind of feeling (relentless/harmony), but somebody could listen and say:”It doesn’t mean anything to me!”. And there is no right or wrong, it’s not important that people would understand or get that, because they can take something else from this music and interpret the way they want....
I’m not desperate to be kind of literal translation it could be something quiet abstract. The audience perhaps don’t realize to start with what they’re being listening to and what they are seeing. As they go through it gradually starts to become slightly clear to what it is the message about. It’s interesting when a composer had a process and there was a reason the way something came out the way it did. All of that it’s not always necessary for the audience to know and sometimes if you give them all the detail it’s too much and then they don’t listen in a way that.....so.... Maybe it’s a case of giving them the snippets of information, but they got sort of piece it together themselves. I see color, but I don’t see color through out the whole thing. For that short piece of time, where I felt a sumptuous harmony, maybe that’s the point where very impressive or really attractive part of the visuals is. "
CREATIVE PROCESS
I highlighted the words which I thought were the most meaningful for me as a designer. Then I was listening to the piece, analyzing the conversation we had and brainstorming about the visuals. I was searching and thinking about the contrasts: quiet - busy, natural - human changed, people - no people....Many ideas were rolling in my head. I went to the park and was filming the same landscapes, seeing how they change over time. I was analyzing landscapes and discovering natural parts of it, such as trees, horizon lines and comparing it with human changed parts such as paths, fences, square shaped spaces.
I was also filming city streets and seeing how they change from being quiet in the night and early mornings and busy during the day. I was trying to get as much evidence of my thoughts as possible, so that I would have something tangible, that I could experiment with.
The piece has 3 parts. First and last are very similar - fast, relentless and the middle part is very quiet, which represents harmony, peace, nature, fragile, existing only for a short amount of time. Since I was trying to come up with the narrative, I did a very simple translation, which would be:
______RELENTLESS_____|___HARMONY__|____RELENTLESS__
______CITY______|_____NATURE_______|______CITY___
In this graph we see the sound wave, timeline and the visuals. The beginning and the end parts would be layers of the filmed city at different times. The layers would be different transparencies overlapping during the time and representing relentless and changing landscape. A middle section would present nature and harmony, where nothing really changes. Here is just a test i did, which would represent the beginning section:
Another approach would be analyzing relationships between nature and people. How nature is being changed by people.... How a very natural environment is transformed into spaces which are not natural anymore, how differently we perceive spaces with people in it and without. We see transition from raw natural organic nature shapes into more urban environment, such as parks, which still holds a bit of nature, and finally to completely "dry" city environment: streets, houses, cars......
Orange dots represent people.
__NATURE + PEOPLE__|__NATURE__|_NATURE + PEOPLE = CITY_
I'm still up for some more experimentation, trying to look for different visual ways to express this relationship in a more abstract and more interesting way, where I cancombine footage and illustration together. The footage evidences urban landscapes variety and changes. Simple test for it:
At the same time I'm exploring music in a more technical way, which is working with a midi file. Midi file structure is great form to see the sound movement. I'm exporting each individual instrument's track from the GarageBand in to After Effects, where I'll have each instruments timeline with the keyframes.
There are 12 saxophones and my plan is to use only some instruments, responding directly to the sound. I chose to do that in order to avoid clutter, since the music is so intense and could cause too much of overlappings. I'm listening to each instrument individually, following the time line and trying to come up with graphic elements, which will best accompany the sound and my chosen concept.
This is a midi file in Garage Band and my sketch.
So my final narrative would be to show contrast between the city/busyness and quiet, natural environment, which happens only during the night time, when nobody is around. The green line ocasionaly comming in during the animation represents our little nature we have in our cities.
I started analyzing urban landscapes and exploring it in an illustrative way trying to discover as many details as I can. I took a train and was examining landscape changes, how urban landscape is changing and how it's blending with the natural environment.
It was a very interesting process. I was exploring spaces around me as well, noticing many new shapes and converting it into graphics and illustrations. I was analyzing the architecture. I discovered a great variety of textures, lines and shapes.
A great influence came from the book Logic&Design in Art, Science& Mathematics, Krome Barratt, 1980
Then I used the Illustrator to transfer my sketches into computer graphics.
I was very inspired by architect Zaha Hadid as well:
Another great artist's Bernardo Rivavelarde "Homodigitals" exhibition:
Dextro abstract art:
Justin Maller's work:
Those are my combined graphics I came up for the city and urban environment:
I chose to use only a little part of the screen, so animation is starting only with the thin line, which is turning into a bit thicker stripe and staying for the most of the time, which was influenced by the video footage of the urban landscapes.
The stripe is slowly changing according to the intensity of the music, the louder and richer the music becomes, the more graphics and shapes related to the city and urban environment start appearing. There are two significantly intense parts, were all 12 saxophones are playing at the same time, which graphically would represent the busiest time of our urban environment.
Here is a part, were we see how the stripe is changing:
The shapes were influenced by architect Zada Hadid and my own architectual observations. In terms of a color, I was going to use only greys and blacks, but then I decided to use colors, becuase cities could be very colorful.
For the middle part of my animation I was really influenced by "Advanced Beauty" works on the Universal Everything website. I was also sketching and exploring an abstract beauty, which would be very colorfull.
Some experiments from the Illustrator:
The beauty is presented on the black background, which represents the night. Only when there is no disturbance the beauty can come out and only for a short time. It starts as a green line, representing transition from the urban environment to the nature.
It starts turning in to more organic shapes and change color from green to pink.
The culmination is represented with the flower, which last just for couple seconds and then the lines(urban influence) start braking it apart and taking us back to the city environment.
The piece has the beginning and the end section kind of the same. The middle is a very short passage, where you get a sumptuous harmony, still when I hear it makes me go kind of weird, funny, makes me shiver. The beginning and the end I suppose is this kind of relentless drive, that keep moving and moving and .... one of my things was the Greenwich park, or any other parks in London are in some aspects really nice places to go, they got greenery and trees and when you go on Saturday or Sunday is so full of people, and that kind of natural environment doesn’t seem natural at all, because it’s been taken by people. People are sitting on every part of the grass and feeding the squirrels. The same space could be so different and changing. So really I think those 2 sections, it goes to this relentless drive, the people, people in the city, people in the space doing what they always do. But that middle section is much more, a glimpse of natural, the excitement of the natural things that are happening, when nobody is around, but it only last for a short amount of time, because that’s not real, because that’s not what happens in a city, in a place where are humans, because we take over. and it doesn’t last it goes straight back to chaos. And these ideas are kind of just, you know, they are not precise in any way, that’s just kind of that is just over all feel, over all thought process and that was put in a music in a kind of abstract way. It’s good if you hear the music and get that kind of feeling (relentless/harmony), but somebody could listen and say:”It doesn’t mean anything to me!”. And there is no right or wrong, it’s not important that people would understand or get that, because they can take something else from this music and interpret the way they want....
I’m not desperate to be kind of literal translation it could be something quiet abstract. The audience perhaps don’t realize to start with what they’re being listening to and what they are seeing. As they go through it gradually starts to become slightly clear to what it is the message about. It’s interesting when a composer had a process and there was a reason the way something came out the way it did. All of that it’s not always necessary for the audience to know and sometimes if you give them all the detail it’s too much and then they don’t listen in a way that.....so.... Maybe it’s a case of giving them the snippets of information, but they got sort of piece it together themselves. I see color, but I don’t see color through out the whole thing. For that short piece of time, where I felt a sumptuous harmony, maybe that’s the point where very impressive or really attractive part of the visuals is. "
CREATIVE PROCESS
I highlighted the words which I thought were the most meaningful for me as a designer. Then I was listening to the piece, analyzing the conversation we had and brainstorming about the visuals. I was searching and thinking about the contrasts: quiet - busy, natural - human changed, people - no people....Many ideas were rolling in my head. I went to the park and was filming the same landscapes, seeing how they change over time. I was analyzing landscapes and discovering natural parts of it, such as trees, horizon lines and comparing it with human changed parts such as paths, fences, square shaped spaces.
I was also filming city streets and seeing how they change from being quiet in the night and early mornings and busy during the day. I was trying to get as much evidence of my thoughts as possible, so that I would have something tangible, that I could experiment with.
The piece has 3 parts. First and last are very similar - fast, relentless and the middle part is very quiet, which represents harmony, peace, nature, fragile, existing only for a short amount of time. Since I was trying to come up with the narrative, I did a very simple translation, which would be:
______RELENTLESS_____|___HARMONY__|____RELENTLESS__
______CITY______|_____NATURE_______|______CITY___
In this graph we see the sound wave, timeline and the visuals. The beginning and the end parts would be layers of the filmed city at different times. The layers would be different transparencies overlapping during the time and representing relentless and changing landscape. A middle section would present nature and harmony, where nothing really changes. Here is just a test i did, which would represent the beginning section:Another approach would be analyzing relationships between nature and people. How nature is being changed by people.... How a very natural environment is transformed into spaces which are not natural anymore, how differently we perceive spaces with people in it and without. We see transition from raw natural organic nature shapes into more urban environment, such as parks, which still holds a bit of nature, and finally to completely "dry" city environment: streets, houses, cars......
Orange dots represent people.
__NATURE + PEOPLE__|__NATURE__|_NATURE + PEOPLE = CITY_
I'm still up for some more experimentation, trying to look for different visual ways to express this relationship in a more abstract and more interesting way, where I cancombine footage and illustration together. The footage evidences urban landscapes variety and changes. Simple test for it:
At the same time I'm exploring music in a more technical way, which is working with a midi file. Midi file structure is great form to see the sound movement. I'm exporting each individual instrument's track from the GarageBand in to After Effects, where I'll have each instruments timeline with the keyframes.
There are 12 saxophones and my plan is to use only some instruments, responding directly to the sound. I chose to do that in order to avoid clutter, since the music is so intense and could cause too much of overlappings. I'm listening to each instrument individually, following the time line and trying to come up with graphic elements, which will best accompany the sound and my chosen concept.
This is a midi file in Garage Band and my sketch.
So my final narrative would be to show contrast between the city/busyness and quiet, natural environment, which happens only during the night time, when nobody is around. The green line ocasionaly comming in during the animation represents our little nature we have in our cities.
I started analyzing urban landscapes and exploring it in an illustrative way trying to discover as many details as I can. I took a train and was examining landscape changes, how urban landscape is changing and how it's blending with the natural environment.
It was a very interesting process. I was exploring spaces around me as well, noticing many new shapes and converting it into graphics and illustrations. I was analyzing the architecture. I discovered a great variety of textures, lines and shapes.
A great influence came from the book Logic&Design in Art, Science& Mathematics, Krome Barratt, 1980
Then I used the Illustrator to transfer my sketches into computer graphics.
I was very inspired by architect Zaha Hadid as well:
Another great artist's Bernardo Rivavelarde "Homodigitals" exhibition:
Dextro abstract art:
Justin Maller's work:
Those are my combined graphics I came up for the city and urban environment:
I chose to use only a little part of the screen, so animation is starting only with the thin line, which is turning into a bit thicker stripe and staying for the most of the time, which was influenced by the video footage of the urban landscapes.
The stripe is slowly changing according to the intensity of the music, the louder and richer the music becomes, the more graphics and shapes related to the city and urban environment start appearing. There are two significantly intense parts, were all 12 saxophones are playing at the same time, which graphically would represent the busiest time of our urban environment.
Here is a part, were we see how the stripe is changing:
The shapes were influenced by architect Zada Hadid and my own architectual observations. In terms of a color, I was going to use only greys and blacks, but then I decided to use colors, becuase cities could be very colorful.
For the middle part of my animation I was really influenced by "Advanced Beauty" works on the Universal Everything website. I was also sketching and exploring an abstract beauty, which would be very colorfull.
Some experiments from the Illustrator:
The beauty is presented on the black background, which represents the night. Only when there is no disturbance the beauty can come out and only for a short time. It starts as a green line, representing transition from the urban environment to the nature.
It starts turning in to more organic shapes and change color from green to pink.
The culmination is represented with the flower, which last just for couple seconds and then the lines(urban influence) start braking it apart and taking us back to the city environment.
