I found and downloaded MousePath the other day (Mac & PC), and accidentally left in running in the background. Several days later I found it running and this is the image that I found it had created:

This represents about two days work wire framing a web site and various other activities. From what I can tell the black dots happen when the mouse is left to rest in one spot, and the white dots happen when you click.

(MousePath is from Anatoly Zenkov)

I had never seen the music video for Star Guitar (Chemical Brothers) until last week when I read by Jason Kottke. The video is really amazing, even though I’ve watched it over and over and over. Directed by Michel Gondry, the clip is a “simple” shot out of a train window, except that the buildings appear in perfect time with the music.

Jason links to the making of video, which shows Michel Gondry experimenting with the score, and using fruit and cutlery to simulate the effect he was looking to create. This took me right back to my experiments with the Visual Score, and my experiments trying to build a relationship between the vision and the music (see this post).

Now in writing this I’ve noticed that my project was a few years after the music video was made. Looking back I wish I had of found the video back then, I might have gone in a different direction.

Star Guitar video

The Making of Star Guitar Music Video

My final Visual Score

Well, I finally got my thesis back and I’m very happy to say that I’ve come away with a first class honours. I’m really relieved. Firstly because I worked really hard and think it is really good work, but also, I expected to get stung by my slightly unorthodox writing style. Luckily it all seems to have gone well.

Thank you so much to everyone to who helped, and supported me during this time, especially my supervisor Ingrid, the nameless people who gave up their time, Jacquie and Gene, Geoff, Claire, Klazina, Neil, the clients who have gone without, and friends and family who haven’t seen me lately.

I’ve put the thesis up online for anyone who is interested, or wants to pretend that they have read it: https://chrismclay.me/honoursthesis/.

So finally I have found time to post the final version of the score for everyone to see. I’m pretty happy with the overall experiment, even if I don’t really like the final product — visually it’s a little rough and child like. That said with more time (and a faster computer) I think a more aesthetically appealing version could be produced.

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After choosing the piece of music, the next step I outlined for myself was to create a visual map of the music which I could use as a design tool for the following stages. What I wanted from this was a rough break down of the various layers in the music that would be represented visually on the screen, and to know when these layers were being played.

This sounded fairly simple to me and I thought I could knock out my first draft in an afternoon of listening. It took much much longer, so much so I have no idea actually how long it took. It was rewarding in many ways and made me much more familiar with the music and how it had been constructed.

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