Advanced Beauty Podcast

Advanced Beauty is now available as a weekly podcast (link will open in iTunes). We’ve been following Advanced Beauty with great enthusiasm here on Motionographer for a while, but for the uninitiated, I decided to ask the project’s founder and co-curator, Matt Pyke (of Universal Everything) a few questions about it.

What is Advanced Beauty?

Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects.

The first collection is a series of audio-reactive ‘video sound sculptures’. Inspired by synasthesia, the rare, sensory experience of seeing sound or tasting colours, these videos are physical manifestations of sound, sculpted by volume, pitch or structure of the soundtrack.

The films embrace unusual video making processes, the visual programming language Processing, high-end audio analysis and fluid dynamic simulations alongside intuitive responses in traditional cell animation. Each artist was given the same set of parameters to work within; to start, finish and exist within a white space, creating a seamless coherence, all sculptures sharing the same white environment.

Using 1920 HD format, with 5:1 surround sound, the films transform the screen into a digital canvas, how the minimalism of a single, floating pixel can be as engaging as the maximalism of an intense multicoloured explosion.

Curated by Universal Everything and musician Freeform, Advanced Beauty is an international collaboration, taking in a family of artists from London, Russia, New York, Japan, Buenos Aires, Glasgow to San Francisco.

This collection of films in the first in a series of exhibitions, with upcoming commissions for the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and galleries in Europe, USA and Japan.

Where did you get the idea for Advanced Beauty?

It was a desire for me (ex record sleeve designer) and simon pyke (ex album maker),
to create a new form of audio-visual expression. I love very minimalist film as the antithesis to the MTV maximalism, and wanted to see how still, pure, sculptural and physical sound could become on screen.

Why are you releasing the films as a podcast?

We have a Blu-Ray DVD coming in Winter 2008, but we are wanting to push these video sound sculptures out there, to promote our collaborators and to establish an unfolding understanding of what we are doing.