Seelenlose Automaten is a generative music visualization with an unusual approach: instead of analyzing the music for cues for visual change, MIDI control messages are sent simultaneously to the sound and image generators. Each mapping to a specific visual or sound effect, these messages are a vocabulary of rules giving structure to the composition. All change can be precisely predicted, and as a result the entire composition is perfectly synchronized.

Created in VVVV by Patric Schmidt and Benedikt Groß, the video uses minimalist forms to good effect. Polygons, lines and circles twist and turn in a gray void, responding to the smallest change in sound. Lacking depth cues, the images frequently read as flat 2D, only to become 3D once again upon the next movement. The total impression is of a glitch aesthetic, even though the deterministic nature of the system is antithetical to the glitch philosophy of creative breakdown.

Seelenlose Automaten video/sound.

Benedikt Groß is a student at the HFG Schwäbisch Gmünd design school in southern Germany. He recently completed an interactive installation presenting the principles of generative systems.

PS. Three times is a charm: This is the third post in a week about a project created with VVVV… VVVV might still not be as wide-spread as Processing or Max/MSP, but there is certainly some very high quality work being produced with it. It will be well worth watching in the near future.

From: Art from Code: Generator.x