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The Audiographa Project Captures the Compositions of Music

02.08.17 | By
The Audiographa Project Captures the Compositions of Music

Imagine your favorite song for a moment – not just the melody or rhythm, but also any visuals that emerge when attuned to the memory of this song. Does the music spread wide and evenly, remain compact and intense, or oscillate wildly in all directions? Audiographa – a personal project of print, web and UX designer Eric Zwierzynski, begun in 2016 with the intent of creating 260 computer-generated vector graphics over the course of the year (one for each weekday) – is the graphic manifestation of this exercise.

Zwierzynski’s year long exercise in auditory imagery has produced a diverse catalog of graphic images representing a spectrum of musicians and genres of music as varied as the stark minimalism of Steve Reich, the careless whispers of George Michael, to the blitzkrieg thunder of Motörhead. Zwierzynski’s Audiographa series also occasionally taps into the embedded synesthesia related to memory of colors connected with the colors originally used for artist’s album covers.

Each algorithmic and graphical representation is shaped by the song’s melody, repetition, length, and the beats per minute. Album covers and other associated graphics further flesh out the color and feel of each composition.

Modern music is going through a renaissance similar to what painting went through at the turn of the 20th century. Technology is coming to the place of accumulating databases of data for various uses – Eric Zwierzynski

The Santa Cruz designer is continuing the Audiographa project into 2017, currently accepting requests submitted via an online form, with future plans to make a selection of these music-inspired graphics available as physical prints. Those near Santa Cruz, California can see several of Zwierzynski’s posters firsthand, with a selection on display at the Art Research Office (ARO) Gallery, the debut show at the new art space located in downtown Santa Cruz.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.