Mickael Le Goff is a DSP developer by day for Native Instruments. By night, he imagines signal as an element of video synthesis, dancing and flickering on tubes. In a new music video for Berlin-based producer Bill Youngman, those skills are put to eerie effect against tubes, as the analog signals fire a lonely oscilloscope tube. The “analog” conception, though, applies just as much to digital sources as strictly analog ones: NI’s own Reaktor, one of the best examples of modular creation on a computer, gets into the visual game, too. Mickael writes:
I’m a French DSP developer and spend most of my spare time creating audio-reacting visuals and other experimental videos.
This music video has been made for the producer Bill Youngman for the release of his last LP (Killekill 003) in Berlin. Bill made this track with a lot of experimental sounds coming from his analog synths. When I started to think about the video, I wanted to have a maximum of sources that can transcribe this analog word into images. I started to experiment with a plasma ball on which I played with my fingers and a little speaker. Then, I found an old tube oscilloscope that was doing pretty nice visuals when tweaking the parameters and feeding signals into it. Finally, with an idea similar of the video synth from LZX, I created different modules with Reaktor (virtual modular synth from Native Instruments), connected to the AV input of a little old b/w screen. I get a lot of interesting audio-reacting movements with modulation signals that were synched to the BPM of the track. Finally, I synchronized all these vids with the music in this 3D space in After Effects. The result leads to this mixture of digital and analog world similar to the way Bill is making his music.
Official specs:
KILLEKILL 003 – Official music video
HH3 (video edit) by Bill Youngman
Killekill – 2011killekill.com/
electrostep.com/This experimental video has been made with different analog sources of light as : Plasma ball and a small loudspeaker, old and tiny B/W analog screen, old tube oscilloscope.
Some of the visuals have been made by feeding the output of some Reaktor patches (virtual modular synth by NI) into the video input of the screen.
Shot with a Canon 550D/T2i
Canon 50mm f1.8 II
After Effects
Lovely work. If you’ve made or been inspired by something with similar hybrids of technique, we’d love to hear about it.
Bonus video: oil and water in an experimental short from a Tokyo Experimental Festival sound art performance.