Visual Music Collaborative 2010 from Aaron Meyers on Vimeo.
Aaron Meyers and Aaron Koblin, each with their own background in expressive code and the connection of music and visuals, offered a terrific workshop last month at the Eyebeam research center here in New York. They involved Ghostly International, a label that has enlisted designers, interactive visuals, and even iPhone apps as ways of exploring its catalog through visual media, in live performance and private listening.
The video at top is the first wrap-up of what went on, and nicely packages some of the collisions of ideas and techniques that took place in five days.
I got a chance to be a participant, and I hope to share more of what we discussed over coming weeks. The experience was intensely packed with inspiration, both of the code and non-code variety, the kind that could easily fuel work for the seasons to come. I think the phrase caught from Zach Lieberman here, though – that sometimes it’s the “human ingredient” that makes the difference in digital work – is probably the one that’s still echoing in all our minds. That can be literal, not just figurative – it might be working out how to get a human input into a piece that makes it work. But it’s certainly suggestive as an idea.
For more:
http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/
And yes, I know I’m fixing up my own work and documentation and code from this week, so stay tuned. Have a great weekend, y’all.