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Licht.Pfad's Music Video Marathon & Antarctic Takt by Dasha Rush

Synthek & Audiolouis LP "Unwise", Natch Records

Concept Design by Margo Kudrina (Licht.Pfad)

Animation & Programming by Stanislav Glazov (Licht.Pfad)

Licht.Pfad's Stanislav Glasov and Margo Kudrina never seem to shy away from marathon undertakings. This can - and has - manifested as bringing in the new year doing visuals for 18 hours straight at a party that lasted 2.5 days, undertaking a 6-day intensive TouchDesigner workshop, building a set of comprehensive high-performance tools, putting on a mini-festival, and this latest feat - producing 12 music videos in 3 weeks! Yup. "How did they do that?" one might rightly ask, and "Do they ever sleep?" so we asked and here's what the dynamic duo revealed.

Licht.Pfad: For this project we had 3 weeks to create 12 music videos to illustrate each of the 12 tracks of the Synthek & Audiolouis LP "Unwise". The first 7 videos were created in a traditional way, using 3D software and compositing tools. Then because of the very tight deadline we decided to use TouchDesigner to make the last 5 videos and developed some new concepts about using TouchDesigner for non-realtime production.

Using a combination of traditional sound analysis and triggering, we used envelopes multiplied with the Animation COMP in order to control the "story" of the track. We used a similar structure of TouchDesigner patches with different types of content - from simple video loops with some color correction (as in the track Unwise) to a full 3D scene (like the Counterbalance track), and with very fast offline rendering in TouchDesigner we managed to finish the 5 tracks during one production day!

Below are the rest of the 5 videos Licht.Pfad produced with TouchDesigner in that one day of production! They are remarkably varied, definitely no 'copy/pasting'. Starting from the top we have Track 8: Unwise followed by Track 9: Lie to God, Track 10: Something Else, and Track 12: Headroom. Track 11: Counterbalance can be found at top of article.

See full video containing all 12 tracks. Album Information.

ANTARCTIC TAKT - AUDIO VISUAL LIVE PERFORMANCE

Concept & Music by Dasha Rush

Visuals by Stanislav Glazov (Licht.Pfad)

Design Development by Margo Kudrina (Licht.Pfad)

This project was a great opportunity to create something special for one of our favorite artists and for Berlin Atonal - one of the best festivals! The main concept, which was to make a frozen and clear, icy "antarctic world" came from Dasha Rush. Dasha's idea was to show a more or less virtual place in the earth, where nature is clean and pure, without people, and to create a journey into this pristine world.

We developed the designs and then decided to make it a bit more complicated visually and technically. Our idea was to go from a micro world to the macro. Starting from one molecule of water we built up a molecular grid of ice, then showed the growing ice patterns which were densifying and building up into icebergs. We then went into the antarctic landscape.

Our goal was to make as much as possible generative while trying to achieve the most photorealistic look possible. For this we developed a lot of really complicated solutions, like realtime complex L-System trees visualizing the growing ice patterns.

The end product - to make a photorealistic and clean visuals - was not a very "typical" solution for the drone and ambient techno music but it worked beautifully! We are planning to do a few more shows in the next to years!

 

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