The Creative Art of Visualizing Sounds

I will never forget Steve Jobs selling the Visualizer in iTunes. He said something like, “We all know what music sounds like, but what does music look like.” That was a stretch, even for Steve, and I could feel the reality distortion field strain to its limits. Ever since that moment, I have chosen to dislike the randomized, computer-generated psychedelic oscilloscopes built into music players.

But when you put sound visualization in the hands of an artist, someone who tries to feel the audio and express it with meticulous, purposeful motion graphics or detailed CGI… that’s something I can get excited about. Putting Content on Content, forcing the expression of a medium through a completely different lens or filter, is a great creative method for innovative artistic expression. In this case it is forcing audio through the prism of motion design.

Vanishing Point is an eclectic, designy new animation from Bonsajo. Watching it, I was reminded of an old Autechre video called “Gantz Graf” which was ridiculously cool back in 2002.