johann sebastian bach gets illuminated by visual artist alan warburton
all images courtesy of alan warburton 

 

 

 

lets get this straight. classical music isn’t boring if you know exactly what to listen to. alan warburton takes baroque classical composer johann sebastian bach’s ‘the well tempered clavier’ and adds a uncommonly creative audio-visual presentation as the music plays along. the exploration was commissioned by snifini music; a website exclusively dedicated to classical music. the light fixtures span a room and a car park, which interpret two collections of solo piano music that construct the composition – ‘the well tempered clavier’ from 1722 and ‘twenty for preludes and fugues’ from 1741.  

 


the animation courtesy of alan warburton

 

 

director and visual artist alan warburton generated a virtual space that incorporates thousands of independent CGI lights, every one of which had to be designed to the exact duration of pierre-laurent amir’s performance. but he had a problem, ‘I needed to find a way of automating the process of these turning on and off in time with the music,’ says Alan. so with the help of matthew bain, a united states based music visualization specialist, they recorded the musical piece on a electric piano, which enabled them to create a MIDI track. this data was then looped with alan’s 3D light model – which does thousands of calculations at a time – so that every illumination responded to the right note at the right, for the precise length of time. the amalgamation of bach’s music, and alan warburton’s visual exposition, the animation brings an added depth the classical piece of melody.

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