Vagues/Ondes (2011)

Vagues/Ondes (2011)

This piece was presented in a live performance at EMS 2011 in New York City. The audio is based on hydrophone recordings of waves washing on Duxbury Beach in Duxbury, MA, USA. The portion you see in the example presented here is an excerpt of a pre-recorded audio-video piece, which accompanied with additional live audio based on the same hydrophone recordings.

I wanted to create a video piece that reacted directly to the cyclical events of the waves heard in the hydrophone recording. I wanted to visual part of the piece to represent the rising and falling intensities of the wave events, as well as the complexity of their sound.

The visual music for this piece, as well as the other two examples, was created using VDMX, a modular platform for live video performance developed for Macintosh OS X by Vidvox. VDMX is capable of taking audio input, analyzing the frequency and intensity content of that input in realtime, and generating control data from the intensity levels of several user-determined frequency bands.

I chose to analyze 4 frequency bands for each piece (different bands for each piece), and to coordinate the resulting control data to the red (R), green (G), blue (B), and Alpha channels of a gradient video synthesizer built into VDMX. I also applied delays to the R/G/B/Alpha channels to slow their rate of change somewhat, so their changes would be rendered more visibly, if less accurately. My intentions were inspired by data visualization, though the works are not intended to be a strictly accurate representation.

First Disappearance (excerpt) from Mild Disappearances

Mild Disappearances (2011) is a suite of two pieces created using analog synthesizer, field recordings, contrabass, and digital post-production. It was released as a CD in 2011 by Songs From Under the Floorboards. I created video for the music using VDMX and location video clips. This clip was also featured on the shadowselves website.

Empty Cinema

Empty Cinema
2011
loudspeakers, projection

One channel video projection, two channel audio, thrift store loudspeakers. Video clips of empty back rooms are projected into the corner of another empty back room, creating a dislocated feeling. Disjointed piano sounds emanate from mismatched thrift-store speakers, creating a distant, distorted sound reminiscent of the tinny speakers at drive-in theaters. The speakers are not hidden but rather are placed deliberately in the frame of the projection, as the only “characters” in the otherwise empty images.

Empty Cinema from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.

 

Speaking Drawing

Speaking Drawing
2008-2010
Woofer, India ink, watercolor paper

In “Speaking Drawing,” a series of watercolor paper cards and 2″x3″ art boards are placed in a large loudspeaker lying on its back on the floor. A very low, slowly changing tone is played through the speaker, causing the objects to bounce and shimmy around inside. I then drip India ink on the papers and blocks and attempt to draw on them as they quiver uncontrollably. Also available on the modisti network.

Speaking Drawing from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.

 

Fort Point Channel

Fort Point Channel, 2010

A portrait of a commercial shipping district in Boston.