Beach boys harmonies visualised by google wizz (Wired)

[buddhahat]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/30/beach-boys-visualisation

[buddhahat]

<bump>

This is definitely worth a watch, so I'm bumping for fear it's been overlooked since the tongal leaks (sounds like the symptom of a mouth infection).

A beautifully simple way of visualizing the BB harmonies.

Here's the direct link if you don't want to read the article. Is it possible to paste a video direct into a post any more .... can't work it out?  

http://vimeo.com/69633166

[SMiLE Brian]

This is amazing, this guy should do more of these.

[hypehat]

I thought it was neat, he could have chosen a more apt song - YSBIM is 85% Brian singing solo, if he'd gone for WIBN that would have been great.

[EgoHanger1966]

It's in Pet Sounds colors, that's how crazy accurate it is

[buddhahat]

It's in Pet Sounds colors, that's how crazy accurate it is

Yeah I noticed that too!

Maybe he could have included some clip art goat graphics, then we'd have world peace!!

[RangeRoverA1]

Great find, buddhahat, thanks for that! Good to see you around here again!

YSBIM is a very nice choice, one of my ultimate faves from the record. Only voices version actually is even more beautiful! The coloring is just how I like - green grass, orange & yellow. Perfect for such a benign song. There're also some white/light-grey wee bannocks moments, but it's not that noticeable. Ok, the best video features are (in order of appearance):

1) the intro flower;
2) the group harmony in which the sun disc gradually gets bigger;
3) Mike's soloing where suddenly we see 2 interlocking circles somewhat similar to the Olympic Rings; they're get bigger too, only this time even much.

Overall, it's a very inventive idea to follow the song note-for-note, vocal-for-vocal - bye-bye, Winamp & other players. So cool that Mr. Chen started off his project with The Beach Boys! Not any other modern artist or the legendary Beatles. So, another hype around our band, yahoo!

My next suggestions: Cabinessence (I can only imagine what variety of colors it could have), Sloop John B (PS version, not the one with Carl's leads on it), Our Prayer & And Your Dream Comes True. 

[SMiLE-addict]

Love the one and only comment to the article. 

"I had to mute the video, beach boys are a terrible band and this terrible song was an extremely poor choice for this presentation"

I hope he was kidding.

[guitarfool2002]

Pretty neat. Consider that what the artist was going for is what some people see automatically when they hear a musical note, what others never see at all, what some report seeing under the influence of psychedelic drugs, and what this artist saw vividly enough to write a code so others could experience it digitally.

What concerns me just a bit, conceptually, is that anyone watching and listening to something like this is being nudged in a way into perceiving that particular visual as connected to that specific music, where the real beauty of music is that you can never simplify or codify it enough so that everyone sees the same visual, if they see a visual at all.

I guess on a very conceptual level I wouldn't want to see a song like Wouldn't It Be Nice reach a point where listeners of the future would respond to it in any way, with any of our senses other than hearing, like Pavlov's dogs salivating whenever they heard a bell ringing.

[RangeRoverA1]

What concerns me just a bit, conceptually, is that anyone watching and listening to something like this is being nudged in a way into perceiving that particular visual as connected to that specific music, where the real beauty of music is that you can never simplify or codify it enough so that everyone sees the same visual, if they see a visual at all.

This is all reasonable what you've said. Indeed, the images that we see while hearing the music are much more colorful & kaleidoscopic than the most complex graphic work, that it just seems useless. Nevertheless, I think we need to support young inventors in all of their endeavors, unless it's not dangerous to humankind. Everything that relates to music isn't harmful, including this project of visualization. It can serve as an alternative variant in addition to simple listening. After all, it's the 21st century now - time of computerization & modern technologies. We must live up to that label letting people with creative minds explore new things, voting for them, buying their items etc.

[bonnevillemariner]

While I think it's cool this guy choose a BB song to demonstrate this, I'm still trying to figure out why this is so amazing.  Amazing music, obviously, but it seems like a beautiful graphic rendering could be done on most any song.  I wish the article would have drawn some conclusion as to how visualizing BB material differs from visualizing other music.  Neat concept, but there's really not much there.

[guitarfool2002]

What concerns me just a bit, conceptually, is that anyone watching and listening to something like this is being nudged in a way into perceiving that particular visual as connected to that specific music, where the real beauty of music is that you can never simplify or codify it enough so that everyone sees the same visual, if they see a visual at all.

This is all reasonable what you've said. Indeed, the images that we see while hearing the music are much more colorful & kaleidoscopic than the most complex graphic work, that it just seems useless. Nevertheless, I think we need to support young inventors in all of their endeavors, unless it's not dangerous to humankind. Everything that relates to music isn't harmful, including this project of visualization. It can serve as an alternative variant in addition to simple listening. After all, it's the 21st century now - time of computerization & modern technologies. We must live up to that label letting people with creative minds explore new things, voting for them, buying their items etc.

But what is the goal of this, especially coming from one of Google's creative directors? The same artist, as the article said, did the Les Paul Google doodle, which was a virtual guitar where users could strum the "strings" and create a mini-melody. *That* was indeed something very exciting, and something new which was also a totally random surprise that greeted millions of Google users and web surfers that day who had no idea what was going to happen.

That was purely interactive, the choice was left up to the user to either try their hand at "strumming" something or to simply go about their business on Google. Some users took it further, creating and recording melodies and cover versions of songs which they'd share. As a guitarist by trade, I took a few tries at it myself because it was so damn cool, you couldn't resist picking out a few notes on the thing.

The artist in that case left the experience itself up to those who chose to participate. Whatever they chose to do, whether they were musicians or not, and whatever they chose to create or experience was the "art". The artist provided a tool, a means to an end let's say, where the end result was millions of random web users paying tribute to Les Paul by virtually strumming a guitar and creating their own music, and the technology allowed even a non-guitarist to take a few strums of their own without needing to buy an actual guitar. And they could create music right there on Google's homepage.

That was virtual reality, and the random surprise of seeing this doodle as we settled in to our workstations rightfully became one of the most talked-about things online at that time. It was fresh, it was different, and it was fun.

The bottom line there was that each user could control the experience and what they got out of it, whether positive, negative, or ignorant.

I'll be honest, if Google were not a part of the equation in this case of assigning a fixed digital visual to the song I'd be more inclined to view it as an artist exploring his medium and nothing more.

But how many of us might feel that the web browsing experience itself has reached a point of annoyance and frustration with how our web-surfing activities are being tracked, analyzed, and how those activities are being used to deliver third-party advertising messages to our computers as we surf the web based on those activities?

They place all kind of tracking cookies and web beacons and everything else on our systems as we search for, say, a place to buy a leather jacket. You'll search, get results, visit a few sites, and move on...then notice how ads start popping up as you navigate other sites related to leather coats, clothing retailers, etc. We're told this is done for our benefit, for our convenience, so these advertisers can target customers who are looking for their clients' services, all of that. Google makes money on the ads being placed, the advertisers get their name out there...

...and we get bombarded by ads we didn't ask for, didn't choose to see, and in most cases don't want to deal with as we go about our web surfing.

When we travel, do we want a hotel concierge to offer advice on where to eat, where to shop, the best nightspots in town from his position in the hotel lobby, or would we rather have him accompany us and follow us around everywhere in that city offering advice and companionship we don't really want nor did we ask for beyond general information?

I'm more concerned with the end result, or the goal of this kind of visualization and future delivery methods of music. It's not this artist per se, I like the art he created on an art-for-arts-sake level. But what if anything will Google or any other digital entity do with similar technology that can in effect control the way a piece of music is perceived and experienced?

As standalone art, it's a worthy pursuit. But I'm concerned with future uses of this and how it could affect how people perceive a piece of music or a work of art, so that someone from afar can codify a series of notes into a visual which would coax our feelings for what we are hearing a certain way.