Hey, I hope all is ok at your end of the screen, wherever you are. For the last few years Ive been experimenting with how to combine live visuals and multiple projections with my music, so I thought Id have a go at a bit of an audio-visual jam in the studio and include some never shown before content, and some brand new studio productions having their first plays.
The internet connection in my studio isnt great so Ive recorded the session to go out from a reliable source, and Ill be online to chat to you if you have any questions and want to join for the stream at 8pm GMT Saturday 25th.
........AFTER…
That was fun, big thanks to all of you who joined for the live chat, really nice to connect with you all briefly. If youd like some more where that came from theres also a live show recording here:
And heres the tracklist from the lockdown stream session as promised.....sorry there were a few (unintentional) glitches in there even going the recording route, Ill see if I can get the video quality sharper for the next one too…
1
Audio: Max Cooper Playing some synths
Video: Sieve of Eratosthenes and Sacks Spiral by Dugan Hammock
2
Audio: Christian Loffler — Haul — Max Cooper Remix
Video: Repetition by Kevin McGloughlin
3
Audio: Max Cooper — Waves
Video: Waves by Kevin McGloughlin
4
Audio: Vessels — Everyone is Falling — Max Cooper Remix
Video: Symmetry by Kevin McGloughlin
5
Audio: Max Cooper and Rob Clouth — Corporeal
Video 1: Myth by Suzi Sie
Video 2: Molten Landscapes by Morgan Beringer
6
Audio: Max Cooper — Origins
Video: Origins by Rabbithole and BlackBox
7
Audio: Max Cooper — Perpetual Motion
Video: Perpetual Motion by Nick Cobby
8
Audio: Max Cooper — Order from Chaos
Video: Order from Chaos by Maxime Causeret
9
Audio: Nicolas Bougaieff — Dust — Max Cooper Remix
Video: Numb by Henning M. Lederer
10
Audio: Yorkston Thorne Khan Max Cooper remix preview more to follow on that soon
Video: Secrets, acusations and charges by Nick Cobby
11
Audio: Glassforms preview more to follow on that project v soon
Video 1: Sleeping Land by Paul Bloomfield
Video 2: Suface Divisions by Andy Lomas
And if youre interested in the background info about how the video projects came about, the ideas in there, and why it looks and sounds as it does, loads of info and all the music videos in the mini-sites for each album:
And there were some questions during the live chat about production techniques and that sort of thing. I did this Reddit AMA recently which went into a lot of detail on that side of things in case of interest:
0:00 Skulls
3:46 Monument (T.I.E Version)
8:33 Sordid Affair
14:53 You Know I Have To Go
22:29 Save Me
27:06 I Had This Thing
32:54 Rong
35:27 Here She Comes Again
40:29 Running To The Sea
45:24 Compulsion
52:23 Coup De Grace
55:43 Thank You
Genre: Synthpop
Label: Dog Triumph
All uploads are from my personal collection and are taken directly from CD or Vinyl.
Any errors please let me know and I will amend.
No copyright infringement intended. If you want it taken down please let me know and I will.
‘Volga / Bengali’ sees Anjunadeep newcomer Bona Fide team up with Anjunadeep Explorations 08 alumni M.O.S. for a double cut of exotic deep house.
A commanding pair of singles, ‘Volga’ combines ethnic plucks with a luscious arrangement of strings, whilst ‘Bengali’ lays chorused vocals across a bed of tribal percussion and all-enveloping bass.
Max Cooper:
For the «Yearning for the Infinite» project I looked for different ways of visualising the infinite, interspersed between imagery of humans in endless pursuit. For one chapter I wanted to visualise the digits of a transcendental number, thought to be endless and non-repeating. Martin Krzywinski specialises in visualising these digits amongst many other things, and one of my favourite images is his tree map of pi, which presents this endless nested chaos in beautiful visual form. I wanted to map that growing randomness and chaotic detailed structural form to the piece of music, so I collaborated with the great music software developer, Alexander Randon on a special tool which allows the construction of musical fractals and many other complex melodic forms. With this tool I started the piece with a simple melodic structure, which is iteratively broken down into more and more complex melodies as the tree map breaks down the initially simple first digit into more and more complex sub-structures. With the aesthetic as a whole becoming this sea of interacting notes, partly random, but with a global form emerging eventually, as the circle is embodied by the chaos of the digits of pi.
Nick Cobby collaborated with Martin to bring this idea to life in animated form for the visual show, with a hyper-detailed tree map structure growing all around the audience. And if youre interested in the ideas behind this I delved into this chapter in some detail in a recent blog essay here (which also comes as a poster with Martins tree map image inside the album vinyl package): maxcooper.net/transcendental-tree-map
Martin Krzywinski:
The transcendental tree map encodes the first 20,244 digits of Pi = 3.1415...7012.
The construction of the map begins with dividing the canvas with 3 vertical lines, which forms 4 rectangles. Each of the four rectangles formed by this process is divided with 1, 4, 1 and 5 horizontal lines, respectively. This forms 2 5 2 6 = 15 rectangles. Each of the 15 rectangles is divided by vertical lines according to the next 15 digits of Pi. This process repeats until we have performed the loop 7 times.
The division of each rectangle is not even—the positions of the lines are slightly jittered. This gives the map a more organic feel.
The number of digits encoded in each loop is 1, 4, 15, 98, 548, 2,962 and 17,180. In total, 17,180 vertical and 3,064 horizontal lines are drawn and these form the backbone of the map.
The video is created by layering numerous animations of the construction of the map, in which the rate and order of line growth is varied. Blinking rectangles indicate that the lines for a digit have completed drawing.
Original tree map and animation clips by Martin Krzywinski.
Compositing, coloring, synchronization and other post-processing by Nick Cobby.
Nick Cobby:
The challenge with Transcendental Tree Map was to bring to life Martin Krzywinskis amazing scientific visualisations of Pi. They are so dense and complex, that a considered approach was needed to ensure the computer systems could handle all the information and still maintain clarity. We had a twofold approach, using automated coded sequences from Martin and then manual digital manipulation and editing from me. Using both a generative and manual approach parallels the juxtaposition of order and randomness inherent in Martins work, and the hypnotic music Max created.
Although all Martins sequence outcomes are different, they all start with the principle rule of Pi, and when placed on top of each other, they all occupy the same grid space allowing layering and using some of the sequences as alpha channels to reveal others underneath. At any one time there are up to 30 sequences running at once. At times I wanted it to look more organic, with line tracers drawing like roots of a tree, or holes appearing in the data then glitching back to its organised structure, like its constantly battling itself. When the visual is at its peak, the construction and destruction of the order of the tree map is constant, and the notion of the infinity is revealed through the endless visual possibilities.
The transcendental tree map was originally created for 2015 Pi Day (http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/pi/piday2015/posters.mhtml) by Martin Krzywinski (http://mkweb.bcsgc.ca) (@MKrzywinski), who has been creating Pi Day art (http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/pi/piday.mhtml) since 2013. Martin is a staff scientist at Michael Smiths Genome Sciences Centre at BC Cancer (http://www.bcgsc.ca) where he works on data visualization.
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