Synesthesia experiment hailed by iotaCenter

An experimental/abstract animation that I made in February 2008 for part of my 3rd Year Animation course at ECA has been noticed by the iotaCenter on Vimeo, and has been added to their Experimental Animation album on the site.

The iotaCenter is "a public benefit arts organization devoted to Abstract Cinema and Visual Music". They have an extensive collection of writings, original research, (and even DVDs for sale); which I found useful for researching some of my final year dissertation. Their description for the Experimental Animation album that recognises my video on Vimeo reads:

"iotaCenter is interested in both new and classic works being created and uploaded to Vimeo. Here we'll keep a list of those works we found to be unique".

My featured work [embedded below] is a 19 second experimental animation called Synesthesia Animated, which utilises an audio clip of the song Drive (Orchestral Live Version) by Incubus from the album Make Yourself: Tour Edition.

The animation sequence was composed over 2 weeks to synchronise with (and visually interpret) the elements of the audiotrack as I heard them.
The visuals are made from about 80 abstract watercolour paintings on 4" pieces of card, using a technique similar to cameraless animation - where I created each frame of animation without tracing the layout from the previous frame.
This technique causes the visuals to have a looseness that would be missing if the frames were traced, while the watercolours further enhance the vibrancy of the animation, which I think nicely reflects the audio.

Surprisingly, as of June 2009, there are only 5 videos in the album, but it is very nice to get recognised by the iotaCenter for creating a 'unique' piece of work...
I'd like to extend my gratitude to Murray Dalgleish for lending me the Tour Edition album, and to Alison Cross for lending me the Make Yourself album (as well as the S.C.I.E.N.C.E album) for the same project a week earlier than Murray.