Chromatic Canvas — Dean An Li

Audiovisual installationMini seriesAnimated installationImaginary photographsExperimental codingNine-day animation challenge

Chromatic Canvas Audiovisual installation

The Chromatic Canvas is an interactive installation that forms a live relationship between piano and drawing, inviting play in a hybrid and collaborative experience.

This work served as my graduation project from Design Academy Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2023. Using a mix of AV equipment and softwares, I developed a system which allows one’s drawings to be displayed and animated in real time with an electric piano. In other words, a way for musicians and drawers to jam together.

This setup is one edition in my research in designing visualisers for instruments. The visuals behave depending on how the piano is played(velocity, pitch, sustain).

For my installation at DDW23, I aimed to test the visitors of the graduation show to see if my visualiser would inspire people to try some piano or drawing. To my delight, it caught the eyes of both players and non-players alike. The new relationship between the two activities made them curious. It was fun to see people experiment while working together—one person on the piano and one person drawing.

One version of the visualiser involved scanning line drawings and animating them digitally. Different parts of the drawings are separated and assigned to different piano keys so they can be triggered in real-time.

Working closely with programming software in school, I became fascinated with the idea of adding a visual element to the experience of playing music. As I played more, I realised how closely related music is to shapes, patterns, and symmetry.