Beauty opioids
Attempts at addictive visual arts
How can I cook some extremely addictive and pleasurable visual arts?
I have been pondering this lately because, as any honest music producer will admit, I want people to check out my music. However, in a world where everyone is vying for attention, you gotta offer people a powerful hit to succeed. So for promo material, I need to have some good shit. Some artistic opioids, preferably.
I have also been thinking about what beauty is lately. As detail in this piece, I think you experience beauty when you encounter sensory signals that are densely packed with patterns that our (subconscious) brain is successfully able to decode and efficiently organize. A prediction of this thesis is that audioreactive visuals ought to be satisfying, since now your visual stimuli becomes correlated with the auditory stimuli — it’s a whole new dimension of correlation being added in. Of course, it is well known that audioreactive visuals are satisfying. You don’t need any fancy ideas to know that. But I rarely see audioreactivity taken to the level that I think the medium has potential for. So I decided to try my hand at creating satisfying eye-catching audioreactive art to go with my music. I added a three snippets below. Judge the results for yourself. Warning: flashing lights.
I'm wondering if there is a longer version of the video with audio or just audio that is used in the second example. It is certainly a beauty opioid for me!
I have to admit they don't do anything for me personally (sorry!) - but I do admire the novel way your compositions essentially confess to the internet-at-large that you're experienced in taking psychedelics..
Music criticism isn't my forté (er.. nor my piano..) but for what it's worth I think the reason audioreactive visuals haven't really been explored to their fullest extent is that the visuals always seem - to the casual observer - to mostly just track the beat (as yours do; I intend this constructively/exploratively and hope it doesn't come across as too critical) rather than tracking more complex/thematic musical structures:
If the piece starts off with murky, bassy rumblings and then there's an uplifting break-in-the-clouds moment, the visuals could start off murky and cloudy, and then bright clear visuals should pierce through.
If the piece has a simple melody that's later repeated 'in earnest' with a key change, more complex harmonics, more layers of instruments/effects, etc. the visuals could establish a pattern that's simple and maybe even a bit washed-out, then that pattern could be repeated with more richness and complexity and colour.
(Of course, I understand this stuff isn't really possible with a five-second clip!)
Essentially, I suppose I'm suggesting that audioreactive visuals could work the way a film score does, except backwards - rather than starting with the visual ideas you want to convey and then composing a score to suit those visuals, you could start with the musical ideas you want to convey and then compose a visual track that aligns with that intention.