Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

Sonic Painting

Creating a painting from sound input

I have a problem with many so called music visualisers; I feel they're often divorced from the music they're supposed to be making visual—crazy psychedelic patterns zapping around the screen for a gentle song about heartbreak for instance doesn't communicate anything. And why are all these visualisations always animations? What about making something more permanent, like a finished painting?

So this piece attempts to make a painting purely from the sound frequencies being output from Damien Rice's Cannonball. When the track finishes you have in front of you a visual representation of that song that you could easily print and hang on your wall.