The goal of this project is to show how fascinating the relationship sonic and visual information share. Each of them are very much related and benefit from each other. Imagine there is a painter and a guitarist in an empty room. Both of them have the ability to paint a melody off the cuff even though one has a palette and the other, six strings.  

During the research process I was very surpised and excited by my discoveries. I learned there are many other artists and composers that have composed their own graphic scores or abstract notation. This part of the process helped me eliminate possibilities of creating similar compositions. Through much exploration I decided to create an animated graphic score. Through my research I realized no one has created an animated graphic notation, so I went in that direction. 

 

Once I gathered enough research I began sketching out ideas for the graphic score. The decision to compose an animated graphic score did not arrive until later in the sketching process. 

 

After a lengthy sketching process I created an additional step. I composed a song that the animation will respond to. So what I did was export each track(stems) of the song and convert the audio into "key frames" in Adobe After Effects. This means that the audio information of either the "drum track" or the "bass track" are assigned to a shape in After Effects that responds to the dynamics of what ever track is assigned. 

The process and experience of recording the musicians responding spontaneously to the animation was incredibly encouraging. The beginning stages of this project hit so many dead ends and I was loosing faith until this part of the process. Not one of the responses was the same. Some of the musicians I recorded were two trumpet player and their responses were incredibly different.

After the recording process, one of the drummers I recorded said," This has changed the way I play, I am going to think more "visual" when I play now." That is exactly what I set out to achieve. Thinking unconventionally and metaphorically helps expand the creative spirit. I want musicians to see their compositions as a canvas filled with contrast, dynamics, color, texture, depth, etc. I feel the same way about visual artists as well. I want visual artists to imagine their compositions have crescendos, tempo change, syncopation, harmony, etc.