Build the Cities

By Raven Kwok / February 28, 2015 / Animation, Generative, Music Video, Works / 25 Comments

Created in Feb.2015

Build the Cities is a code-based generative music video I directed and programmed for the track Build the Cities by Karma Fields Feat. Kerli Kõiv.

针对中国用户，若上部视频无法显示，可以访问MANA版本。

The entire music video consists of multiple stages. The basic structure for each stage is a dynamic subdivided cubic cell, which is able to multiply based on a designated distribution pattern.

For generating the animated singing figure (Kerli), the pattern is computed based on depth sequence of the original footage. Speaking of the footage, a Kinect, a camera, plus Depthkit were used to shoot both the RGB and depth footage simultaneously. Since I was not using Depthkit’s built-in visualizer, an additional program was later developed to post-sync the two footage based on the milliseconds tags of the depth sequence.

For generating the cityscapes, I programmed another separate generator to produce images of random aerial views of buildings, using brightness to indicate each block’s altitude. The images were later imported and read by the system the way similar as Kerli’s depth sequence. The mapping of the pattern is also affected by each host cubic cell’s “gravitation mode”, which changes the pattern’s facing direction.

The entire music video is programmed and generated using Processing, with a few slight radiant blur effects done in Premiere during composition.