Photograph by Halfdan Aarup Vestergaard
Creating vortexes of carrots, flowers and bearded men
Photograph by Halfdan Aarup Vestergaard
Poul Lendal and David Mondrup make up Vaev ["loom" in Danish], a
project exploring the melodies and lyrics of nordic folk music
using traditional instruments in combination with modern electronics.
I took on the task of creating visuals to accompany a performance at
TedX Aarhus 2018, and have been VJing for Vaev since at various venues
around Denmark.
In addition to playing a variety of odd folk instruments,
Poul moonlights as an illustrator drawing intricate patterns and colorful
motifs for their record artwork.
Initally the visuals were based on a Processing sketch that
could arrange these into "mandalas", and animate the scale and rotations
using a simple GUI.
Eventually the project was ported to TouchDesigner allowing for additional
and more detailed elements to be added.
This also caused me to dust of my animation skills in After Effects, as the
many birds, fish and carneval-styled masks called for movement.
Luckily all the hours animating each item paid of in adding to the instrument
of undulating colors and shapes.