Probably have a lot of long blog posts to read so Iâll try to keep mine simple. Iâll try, no guarantees.
With the free reign we were given for this project I wanted to do what I always try to do and never do: music. Iât been now three years since I haven't been to music school and I miss the music. Donât miss the school. So I wanted to explore something related with it.Â
At first I wanted to write music. It was too open ended and didnât give me direction. Was also not related to the course. If I had music already written and I had to brand myself then it wouldnât have been a bad option.Â
Thinking of music and colour and how to make visuals for music I started researching synaesthesia. Cool condition and an interesting way of justifying visuals.Â
I followed so many tutorials, most of them the ones of the processing site itself.
Making the program was a nightmare. At first I was gonna build a piano. Thought of even 3D printing the parts and designing it myself. But I know nothing about 3D rendering or printing or anything, too complicated.
So then I found a tutorial of how to make a paper piano. Seemed simple to follow. I started gathering materials and some were hard to find. So I asked Alvin Tsang, a cyber security coder for some advice. He essentially said that what I wanted to make could not be done as Arduino is a simple chip and cannot process too complicated functions.Â
Back to the drawing board.
Making a paint by colours but with music. The program of a paint by numbers is too heavy to be done of processing, which is what I had been learning until now. I thought of doing it with several jpegs, in order of how I would want an animation to work. But it defeats the purpose of exploring synaesthesia, its then just an animation that works with a song. Nothing really interactive about that.Â
So finally what I created was a simple program, similar to MS paint that also produces sound with each colour. Thats its essence.
Through the whole process I have been so lost about what the aesthetic should be for my program. Even though processing lets you visualise instantly what you are doing, all the worry with understanding the code was too distracting.Â
Thinking of using the song âShe's a Rainbowâ by the Rolling Stones. I liked the idea of using psychedelic lines. They look like wave forms and are very colourful, which relates to my project but not enough.
Then I was thinking of colour and sound in terms of glitches and the distortion of sound and colour. This again was getting too complicated.
But then I looked back at the program and thought what made most sense for the program and the brand values that I had set up. So I went with the theme of ellipses.Â
trying combine some ideas (waves and dots)
Until more research on dots gives me the answer.
Making a font was not in my original plan but it ended up helping a lot with solidifying the aesthetic.
These are the short Vidsy style videos to promote the brand.
Overall Iâm quite proud of my project but there are still things to make better. Having more examples of the promotion, the collaboration with Pantone, a functioning website, a program that doesnât screech... And even though the submission is done I am gonna continue working until those issues get solved on the program. It would be such a waste to come this far for it to only work halfway.
