"Three Space" (2013) by Lewis Sykes

A live audiovisual performance linking the melodies and sonic textures within a minimal techno soundscape directly to abstract visualisations inspired by experimental animators Larry Cuba and John Whitney Sr.

This is documentation of a work that originally featured as part of a performance at Seeing Sound 3, Bath Spa University, UK, 24th November 2013.

The set featured four, short, abstract audiovisual works created as part of Lewis Sykes’ Practice as Research PhD and recent collaborative practice with Ben Lycett - all of which attempt to show a deeper connection between what is heard and what is seen by making the audible visible. By looking for similar qualities to the vibrations that generate sound in the visual domain, they try to create an amalgam of the audio and visual where there is a more literal ‘harmony’.

Lycett & Sykes built a real-time, music visualisation system - integrating the algorithms used by seminal experimental computer animators Larry Cuba and John Whitney Sr - in openFrameworks, the open source C++ toolkit for creative coding. This video is an edit of several live recordings made using the software. While it may lack the natural 'flow' of a live performance, it better demonstrates the overall capabilities of the system - which is still a little tricky to control. Development is ongoing and future iterations will address these issues.

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