sijings-lookingOutwards04

The visualization of sound inspired me because I used to do artworks about visualization, for example, the visualization of math. Thus, I zoomed into the relationship between sound (amplitude and frequency) and visual patterns to see if one relates to the other. Through my exploration, I found Simon Russell’s work to be a really interesting example to me. He is an animation director based in London. This project is about sound visualization and it is called “Audio Geometry Exploration- Sonification in Houdini”. This is a project using Houdini experiments where geometry is used to visualize sound and creates patterns. Simon discovered that Houdini is really flexible with audio and allow the audio to create f-curves from geometry. So he can manipulate in myriad ways. To be more specific, Simon used 3d geometry to connect collisions of lines in the visualized part with an audio pulse based on the shape’s height. The basic strategy is to export from Houdini into Cinema 4D and see cloners and splines to create additional geometry. Last but not least, he used After Effects and Audition to composite and mix. Overall, I really admire the coherence between the visual part and the sound. It is really pleasant to watch the whole video when two of our sensory parts are combined well.

audio geometry exploration: sonification in houdini