James Katungyi-LookingOutwards-04

Artist: Jono Brandel

Title: Carolina-Experimental musical landscape for Kimbra

Year: 2015

Carolina is an Android application that maps a soundtrack to the changing landscape as one drives through. It plays to artist Kimbra’s ‘road to Carolina’. The camera’s movement is mapped to a spline. Figures pop up as 2D abstractions of the landscapes and fly by just like landscape features. The figures are triggered by instruments in the music track. The combination of simple 2D forms triggered by a soundtrack and moving in a 3D space is a rich piece of work.

The application uses a combination of Two.js for the landscape abstractions and Three.js as the movement of the camera along the spline. The 2D-3D interaction is evident in the application. The various music instruments are represented by specific shapes which in turn trigger the ‘landscape features’ in the camera view, thereby linking each musical instruments to a distinct 2D landscape feature.

The final form is an animated journey through a landscape whose features appear in consonance with the soundtrack. It is a synthesis of music and art in a digital platform just as the artist sought to do.