Mother - The visualisation of music

From the colour organs of past centuries, to today’s VJing and new media art performances, artists and scientists have shown perpetual interest in the live performance of visual imagery. The limited aesthetic flexibility permitted by existing tools however has meant that artists striving to differentiate their work have most often been the inventors and creators of the tools they use. Furthermore the current user interface paradigms for the live performance of visual imagery makes very little use of the possibilities that enactive (embodied) knowledge engenders.

To address these obstacles, we have developed a set of tools, that make use of and extend the popular Processing open-source multimedia programming environment. Together they will enable artists without the skills of computer programming to significantly influence the content of their visual performance, while also keeping the programming of new graphics algorithms accessible to those seeking greater creative freedom.

The projects most innovative distinctive feature is that the resulting graphics are primarily controlled through the musical instruments used by a group of live musicians. The hypothesis driving our choice of interface is that, by connecting musical control data (i.e. scales, notes, chords, tempo, force, sound timbre and volume) to graphical control information (a process called mapping), performers will be able to more readily transfer their enactive (embodied) knowledge of the instruments to creating animated visual art that is correlated with music.

The visual output produced is most related to the art forms of abstract animation/visual music, and algorithmic synaesthesia.

The central application is ‘Mother’, created for mixing the output of multiple Processing sketches. It can dynamically load/unload sketches, and mix their visual output in a manner not unlike VJing. In order to work, each sketch needs to use a very simple library that I also include, which handles communication with the host. OSC control data is forwarded to the sketches from the host, while the host itself is also controlled solely using OSC messages. 

Visuals from the project

Further information

For more detailed information, we encourage you to read our related academic paper-
Mother: Making the Performance of Real-Time Computer Graphics Accessible to Non-programmer.

On Ilias Bergstrom’s website, www.onar3d.com, the latest version of the Mother program can be found, along with the most recent news relating to its development.

The animated graphics are procedurally rendered in real-time, and are controlled primarily through musical notation data (MIDI).

The software used for the visuals is Mother 0.3, a free open source program developed by Ilias Bergstrom for VJ-ing with multiple Processing.org sketches.

For more information on Mother and to download the latest version, visit www.onar3d.com.