RESONANCE

Posted by Justin Cone

Stop. Put on your headphones. Go fullscreen, and sit still as Resonance blasts your earballs to pieces.

After debuting at OFFF Barcelona, Resonance is now online for all to enjoy. In its creator’s words:

[Resonance is] a collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers / studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways.

There are several goosebump-worthy moments sprinkled throughout the film’s 11 minutes, but some of my favorite pairings are Jr.canest/David Kamp (2:50), Polynoid/David Kamp (4:19), Momentary People/Audionerve (7:08), and Onur Senturk/Studio Takt (8:37). The beauty of the project is that there’s something for everyone.

Credits
Visuals:
Displace Studios and MoveMakeShake | Esteban Diacono | Heerko Groefsema | Jean-Paul Frenay | Jr.canest | KORB | Kultnation | Mate Steinforth | Matthias Müller | Momentary People | MRK | Murat Pak | Onur Senturk | Physalia studio | Polynoid | SR Partners | Thiago Maia | Tom Waterhouse | Tronic Studio | Spatial Harmonics Group

Audio:
Audionerve | Combustion | CypherAudio | David Kamp | Echolab | Hecq | Michael Fakesch | Mutant Jukebox | Radium Audio | Box Of Toys | Studio Takt | World Gang

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.
More by Justin >

19 Comments

diestrin

Do you have an idea how could they make that sounds?

Davidkamp

recording, processing and magic. :)

thereisnoenemy

ableton live?

Davidkamp

ableton, logic, cubase…i think it doesnt really matter what software is used. Most of todays DAWs do basically the same thing: recording, editing, mixing, applying plugins. All you need most of the time.

I mostly use ableton for sketching due to its intuitive workflow and cubase for mixing/mastering and precise editing. Max MSP for weird things. Each software has its advantages and disadvantages and all have their place in the toolbox. Much more important is knowing what you want to do with it.

mastabingus

Disclaimer: There is DEFINITELY some great work in there…

However… is it just me… or is this whole “take a simple 3d model, and jack it up w plugins and repeater effects, and particles, and wire mesh, along with some glitchy soundtrack” …. getting kind of played out? This was cutting edge in 2004… Again, this is good work, but… i was getting bored. Am i just jaded?

echolab

what’s important to me is that this is non-commercial experimental work, coming from people who mainly do commercial work on a day-to-day basis (myself included).

If you don’t dig the style, that’s subjective. You could just as easily dismiss stop-frame animation with acoustic/organic music by saying it was cutting edge in the 60s & 70s etc. etc. I personally think the artists involved have taken things further than what has been done before – in the same was as other artists who today are pushing things creatively with older, more traditional animation techniques.

Jens

No not just you, I agree. I also agree that it’s nice seeing people who mainly do commercial work doing something non commercial. But I found that some of the pieces are very similar as far as the sound and the visuals go.

cvn

This makes me feel old. When I was 16 I used to love WWFT, Nando Costa, and WDDG. They made exactly this kind of stuff.

Now, though, I look at it and wish these people were using their talent to tell stories instead of making ads and tech flexing.

Mossman

I completely agree. All of the spots are extremly well done. But this whole “take a sphere/cube/tetrahedon whatever, put it into a strange environment and start to distort/desintegrate whatever” thing is starting to become kind of boring. More than half of the spots are made that way. The rest is truly inspirational though…

oliversin

jr canest’s 2d piece was the most refreshing one. The rest were all too similar but doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it.

safetyfirst

I’m really glad to read some critical voices here.

Just yesterday I had a long talk with a friend about the sensibility to distinguish between OK and great work. Sometimes it seems that our community has a great lack of it. Lately so many things I have seen are just terribly boring. Like the OFFF titles and this piece.

Most of the clips lacking so much but especially ideas. I was really happy when JR Canests piece started. Visually and sonically. What is great about it, it doesn’t try to be so much more. It is what it is and that makes it great.

It feels like motiongraphics are in a whole like techno once was. It’s about time that the voices of people who are doing things that are different becoming louder.

I wish motionographer would contribute to this and not just – walk with the rest of the crowd – the path that has been used for too long. Yes you are responsible, you post mediocre stuff and say it is great, so many others will follow.

Keep it great!

rudi nieuwenhuis

“The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways”
I guess this could explain the frequent “take a sphere/cube/tetrahedon whatever, put it into a strange environment and start to distort/desintegrate whatever”
The KORB visuals are imho the most unique, refreshing and provoke an emotional reaction. At least that’s the effect it has on me, in a western culture where the media has made me hyper-sensitive for these kind of images.

frq

I just feel that 80% of this could have been explored better visually. In most cases I feel like the sound design exceeded it’s visual counterpart.

monovich

I enjoyed them all quite a bit, and found a number of them very inspiring (aka “I wish I could do that; I suck”).

A thought I had though was that a lot of it looked like design for designers. I think an additional challenge that would be cool to see would be to make them relatable or engaging to someone not a part of this tiny little design world. The bird one had some of that because it told a story, but some of the other ones were “just” pulsing triangulated objects.

(again… I wish I could make pulsing triangulated objects like that.)

Simon Robson

I do not think this work entertains. But I don’t see this is a failing. To me, this piece is a kind of a journal, a recording of the state of the art at a point in time. Although I don’t know the curator, I imagine there was no directive passed on to the artists to create similar pieces. The fact that this occurred says a lot about where certain artists are technologically and aesthetically in 2011. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is. Were a similar experiment to have taken place, bringing together stop-motion animators and acoustic musicians, I imagine similar aesthetic similarities would have occurred.

To suggest this assembled work indicates that motion-graphics is in a hole, is to mis-judge the intention of the work, and what it shows us. As I said above, it shows us the state of the art under certain parameters.That’s all.

I imagine this work will be looked back on in years to come as a great compendium of a particular strand of audio visual work in 2011. I don’t think it will win Sundance or an oscar, but i really don’t think that was the intention…

Brandia

While no longer an exercise in artistic masturbation, with little help from the standpoint of design, from aesthetics marks a starting point, a vision for the future trendsetters.

Definitely a good job from the technical point of view and daring decontextualizing. Who can do something?

zeflint

I dont see why we should define this as “experimental”…
everything looks almost the same here (except maybe for Jr Canest and Korb)
Check out music video for “Gantz Graf”, from Autechre (talking 2001!!!), if u don’t know it already, to see some serious experimental stuff

csy

sure is a lot of grinded gears about the aesthetic. If you take a look back in the history tubes you’d see that a lot of these artists were the pioneers of this style. Not to mention the fact that they were asked to “explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways”.

Now this is just my opinion, but the level of technical ability to create ANY of these is much higher than your average motion graphics freelancer. They still managed to maintain a day job, side job, and this artistic escapade. I got a chance to see a few of these early on, and they got better and better as the days progressed.

Its not like they posted a tutorial about how to make it, threw a heavy handed DOF color grade on it, and spawned 1000 youtube/vimeo artists.

John Morales

This was a really cool project that we sponsored.  The blending in of the sounds was just fantastic.  Glad we could help in our small way to make this a reality.

John
http://www.renderrocket.com

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