Minuets

Generative Music Portraiture

This collection started with a vague idea of creating generative portraiture and music from the same data, and then combining them into a single work. After much experimentation, "Minuets" was born.

The visuals are generated from three types of datasets: Portrait photographs, hand-drawn line portraits (83 to be exact), and a face-captured model of Espen's head. These data points were then fed into a data manipulation algorithm crafted by Espen to select and transform a small set of pixels from an image into a moving musical portrait. These sets of pixels, referred to as seeds, fueled the construction of both the musical and visual elements of the works below. For example, the melodies in the music are direct copies of the X (timing) and Y (pitch) coordinates of these seed vectors.

Each of the two seeds generated for this collection have been rendered from two perspectives in the same 3D space - the only aspects that separate the two are the angle from which they are rendered (front and side, rotated by 90 degrees from each other) and color variables.

Beyond editing the code and rendering setup there has been no editing after the actual generation of the data.

The series was presented as a Nifty Drop in 2022. Check out the drop here.