Catalano, Michael Anthony (2017-01). Creating Bright Shadows: Visual Music Using Immersion, Stereography, and Computer Animation. Master's Thesis.
Thesis
This thesis outlines the research and process of creating an immersive audiovisual work titled "Bright Shadows," an 11 minute three-dimensional animation of dynamic, colorful abstractions choreographed to instrumental music. This piece is categorized under a long tradition of a type of visual art aspiring to musical analogy called "visual music" and draws heavily from the two-dimensional aesthetic stylings of time-based visual music works made in the early to mid-twentieth century. Among the topics discussed in this paper will be an overview of the artistic and technical challenges associated with translating the visual grammar of these two-dimensional works to three-dimensional computer graphics while establishing a unique aesthetic style. This paper also presents a framework for creating a digital, synthetic space using a large-format immersive theater, stereoscopic imaging, and static framing of the digital environment.
