This City

This City from Mark Wheeler on Vimeo.

This City is an audio-visual performance piece by Mark Eats. It explores what happens when a soundtrack controls the world as much as the world influences its soundtrack. All effects are in‑camera and controlled live.

More about the tech here: https://vimeo.com/markwheeler/this-city-tech

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I’m interested in what happens when working on visuals and music in parallel, adding features to the visuals software when the music demands it and writing the music as a soundtrack to moments that emerge from the code. The imagery is not an add-on, it’s part of the composition process.

The visuals software was built using openFrameworks and operates much like a game engine. A map is created with rules for traffic flow, junctions and traffic lights. Thousands of cars can be added, each with their own personality, some preferring to drive faster or more aggressively than others. The world is then influenced by MIDI inputs that affect parameters such as the simulation speed, exposure length, camera moves or even gravity.

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Music + Visuals:
Mark Eats http://www.markeats.com

Co-Directed by:
Mark Eats
Clay Weishaar

Assisted by:
Christine Cha

This City Tech Walkthrough from Mark Wheeler on Vimeo.

A brief walkthrough of the tech used to create This City.

Watch the performance video here: https://vimeo.com/markwheeler/this-city