Chromatic
London, 2023
LED, Sound, Code
“To most of us, music suggests definite mental images of form and colour,” wrote artist Oskar Fischinger whose “optical poems” synchronised abstract animations of geometric shapes to music. Chromatic updates the optical poem by creating a software-driven visual instrument that plays with the rhythm of proportions, the harmony of form, and the interaction of colour in an improvisational meditation on the fluidity of perception. Each line, shape, and colour plays a role in constructing this generative audiovisual composition. A computationally programmed rule-based system endlessly assembles and re-assembles the elements of form, colour and sound into new abstract formations and harmonic sequences, producing novel constructions in a collaboration between man and machine.
Light itself becomes an instrument in Chromatic as colour frequencies are expressed through corresponding sound frequencies in a synesthetic transmutation that yields both harmonious and discordant results. Referencing Josef Albers and Johannes Itten’s colour theories, as well as Bauhaus principles of design, the visual forms consist of simple geometric shapes that protrude and recede from the viewer, occasionally giving the illusion of depth and producing spatial configurations that, for a moment, seem almost solid before ultimately betraying their instability and flickering, vibrating and dissolving into the background.
Run time: 10 Minutes
Music composed by Daniel J Thibaut, Ableton/MAX for Live Programming by Dave Meckin
Commissioned by 180 Studio
Film by Matt Watts
Images 1 & 3 by Jack Hems
Images 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 by Sandra Ciampone
