John Whall's MA Blog

A journey though my study in MA Visual Communication (Animation)

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Nigel Stanford Cymatics.

Source: http://videoandfilmmaker.com/wp/index.php/news/watch-brilliant-video-cymatics-science-vs-music/

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Cymatics - The Invisible World of Sound

http://www.cymaticsource.com/pdf/CaduceusArticle.pdf

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Feet a bit too smelly?

I like the visual outcome of this render. The movement of the smell and the way it blends together over time is really effective. However, I do wonder if there is too much of it? These would have to be some pretty pungent feet to give off this much smell. Which leads to another questions, does the strength of the smell indicate density or the type of smell itself?

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Smoke Movement Test

3D smoke moving through space. This is a test set up to establish the properties of how smell travels in three-dimensional space. 

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The Infrared Fart

Now, firstly I’m not trying to focus on bad bodily smells. However, I had in my head that smell was more liquid in nature based on a previous research, but it is does have a smoke dynamic (technically also liquid) as this infrared video of a fart shows.

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Visualising Smell - Fluid, Air, Vaporous, Organic, Flowing, Liquid.

Based on the colourisation of smell, this is a visualisation of a bad smell, one associated with with smelly feet (musty). I’m exploring this in 3D to add depth and volume to the interpreted visuals. However, it is proving to be taking in relation to processing the render and I may look at an alternative approach to speed up the process.   

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Interesting aesthetic of sound waves a squashed spheres. Could I be thinking about this dynamics of sound wrong?

Source  http://blendersushi.blogspot.co.uk/?view=classic

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Ripple Comparison

I wanted to clean up the curve of the wave line as well as create a smoother transition of the wave being born and then dying. After the first (left) render in Maya I realised that each individual wave needs to die out on it’s own and a collection of waves would not allow me to do this with a wireframe render. So, I created a single wave and overlaid itself in After Effects (right) which provides a more convincing journey from birth to death.

This will now provide a nice base to establish sound waves within a site.

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3D Acoustics & Spatial Hearing

Source: http://www2.nict.go.jp/univ-com/mcc/people/parham/resfr_introAudio.html

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Sound Ball Comparison

The idea behind this brief experiment is to visualise sound waves in 3D form: a sphere. Although the rendering of the 3D shape does show a wave, it doesn’t appear 3D compared to the view in the UI.

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Holographic Music

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Balls of Sound

While thinking up ways of visualising sound that was outside of waves and visual distortion, I pondered the concept of expanding/pulsing balls. After quickly scanning the internet to look at the behaviour of sound, I came across this visualisation by ColorSimply. This isn’t necessarily the behaviour I had conceived, as I was pondering an idea which involved sound passing through the wave forms and bouncing off of impassable objects, but it’s interesting to find this commercial take on idea of sound as balls.  

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Visualising Smell Concept

I decided to experiment with this sense using a recognisable smell: feet. This provided an opportunity for the smell to travel in a non-linear motion. 

Sound proved to be tricky and relied on human reactions to the sense rather that what it actually produced (if any) and I needed to also be careful that SFX for different senses didn’t become too similar and muddy. More work in this area is needed.

I’m not exactly happy with the outcome due to computer power restrictions. I also experimented within the 3D aesthetic and unfortunately, it provided to much to process. I hope to return to this idea soon however. 

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Characteristics of the Senses

(On going)

Sight

Light

Colour

Frequency

Depth

Perspective

Heat (angry, artificial)

Sound

Vibration

Waves

Frequency

Sonic

dying

fleeting

distorting

Taste

Sharp

Salty

Sweet

Bitter

Sour

Smell

Fluid

Air

Vaporous

organic

flowing

liquid

Touch - Is this intangible?

Temperature

Contact

Pain

Image source: http://www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/chapter2.htm

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Synesthesia: The Smell of a Sound, The Taste of a Color

An interesting overview of Synesthesia and it’s description of “the blending of the senses”. This is important to keep in mind throughout my own work. Do I create visualisations for each sense and keep them separate, or does a blend of visuals create it visual synesthesia?

It is also important to remember the synesthetic relationship between animated documentary and sound as described by Honess Roe (2013).

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How Sound and Smell Can Create Perfect Harmony

Source:https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/oct/22/sound-and-smell-create-harmony

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Rojier Stalker - Lightfader