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Peace for Triple Piano (Patreon)

Published:
2018-02-26 16:44:51
Imported:
2026-06

Content

It's done! It's live! Woooo!

And here's the making of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1zJoU6Luss

SPACE TIME DIAGRAAAAMS

I'll write a little more about it all later, but I wanted you to be the first to know it's up :D

Thank you thank you thank you for sticking with me through it all!

Vi

Files

Peace for Triple Piano

Piano peace! In 360 and with 3D audio. Check out the making of video, it's REAL COOL: https://youtu.be/x1zJoU6Luss Use your phone and youtube app with headphones to be able to look around with spatial audio on this video. The making of video also includes a flat version so you can see it all at once. This is a collaboration with mathematician Henry Segerman, with additional help from physicist Sabetta Matsumoto. There’s a surprising amount of theory behind this video that we get into a little bit in the making of. Crowdfunded on Patreon! Special thank you to Caleb Wright, Albert Wenger, Pat Devlin, Jack Heidrick, David Perryman, Jeremy Buchanan, Chris Pierik, Wish Society, Carol Hart, Andrea Di Biagio, Charley Sheets, Jodi Vezzetti, Andrew Romaner, Michael Tiemann, and Yana Chernobilsky. Join us: https://www.patreon.com/vihart http://vihart.com

Comments

Kenny Tilton

Brilliant. My mind was spinning. In the end, I understood "sphube". The paper cutout model must go in the Smithsonian.

Bob

Truly moving. Thank you

Randal Moore

Ultra-brilliant...sorry, for the moment i'm just stunned by the poetry in motion here. This is all definitions of 'grace'. I'm sorry--for now my eyes are welled and spilling out. I don't want to leave this place you took my mind. I will get back for a better comment later.

Randal Moore

In my media room now---this is synchronized perfectly for 5.1 Stereo but also Movie logic 7. You are flowing all over the room with the music and vocal. I can't seem to get over it. (had more praises here but too mach takes away from how sincere I am) (I can move cursor left or right and your voice moves right along to each piano---even to my surround speakers just behind me pick up what I don't see onscreen---so i follow the voice and it moved perfectly to left channel front where you are. Just so you know you accomplished exactly what you promised :) but way more than i could imagine)

Noah Schmidt

This is incredibly well done, and well worth all the effort I know you guys put into it. About halfway through the video I realized that it all had to be one take that worked with itself, and that astounded me even more. Thank you for this awesome piece of mathematical art. Quick question: Do you ever cut off the video during the loop or did you do the whole choreography multiple times so it all loops in one take all the way to the end?

Henry Segerman

We edited it together from a single take, just over 4:30 long.

vihart

Thank you so much! It wasn't easy :) We do the whole choreography three times in one 4-minute take, which is difficult to perform perfectly but easier than editing a perfect time loop with the choreography we wanted. We didn't want to sacrifice the choreography to make it more time-loopable, and also it allows subtle variations of performance (kind of like how in an escher tesselation certain lizards might be highlighted or more detailed, there's variations in the musical performance to bring out different parts at different times). Doing it 3 times instead of 1 surprisingly means that there's 5 different kinds of seams between things instead of 1 (like Henry matching up with himself looping around the piano, and the clone editing for when I'm close to myself and shadows overlap). One of the many surprises during editing that showed gaps in my understanding of the structure, and the depth of what was hidden in it.

vihart

I like the image of me flowing all over the room! Ambisonics are SO COOL and I'm very glad it works for you :D

vihart

Thank you! I am very proud of that model.

Kenny Tilton

Clearly I need a better media set-up. Which right now is a MacBook in a kitchen.

Noah Schmidt

Wow thats all so crazy, I can see why it was such a challenge to set up right! I'm glad it all worked out the way it did though.

Jonathan Aul

I'm in the same boat, only with a Dell on a desk. This one really makes me want to get a setup which will allow me to view / listen to it properly, but my budget for such is pretty microscopic. :(

Alexey Badalov

This is amazing! What a great idea. Just wish the video quality was higher — the compression artifacts are pretty severe here.

Jeff Epler

This filled me with joy. Thank you.

vihart

Try forcing the quality higher in the youtube settings and see if that helps! It's uploaded in 4k but will appear in lower quality if your internet can't stream that fast, and the effect is worse for spherical videos than flat ones ones.

Randal Moore

I'm not sure if maybe you guys are saying it's dickish of me to mentioning many variations of sound systems in my house, but i'm quite sensitive myself so wouldn't try to 'one up' anyone. I make a living writing and performing music with a band so have a studio at home also. I use a pseudonym so Vi knows I'm not advertising my band on her patreon site. My report of Vi's synchronized sound here was just to let her and anyone else know I've tested different settings. I'm also testing different settings of hertz going to each speaker. Obviously I'm obsessed with sound, but apologize to anyone thinking I'm anything more that a guy blown away with what Vi and Henry created here.

Randal Moore

What's the future of this piece of art? I'm an idiot. Can you display this in a museum? A math museum? I'm an idiot. Hi Henry! Has this inspired you guys to discover something you didn't expect? Will you use the formulas again? Just remember, I'm an idiot. What else can you apply this format to? I just got home to see 'the making of'. Whaaaa??? How many levels or types of math were used for this, Vi? I know--I'm an .... Sorry to write so much but jeeez !

Henry Segerman

Hi Cecil, I've been doing quite a bit with transformations of spherical video, here's a whole playlist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtO7VmK73ItYt3yUgIOTpESh7zk3ke_0I" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtO7VmK73ItYt3yUgIOTpESh7zk3ke_0I</a> (transformations start at video number 3). I would think that these pieces of art will live and be experienced much like other audiovisual experiences, e.g. movies. Stored in various ways and to be experienced with appropriate equipment. This has a better chance of surviving for a while than VR experiences that rely on being able to run a particular software program, because it's essentially video and audio tracks, with only a little extra work needed to interpret it.

Randal Moore

You mean I have to know how to juggle too? Thanks for your comments, Henry. It's all making more sense to me now. Tying in Vi's music had to be a mega challenge for ya'll. Obviously you have worked together before. I do get what you are saying in that this works on a simple computer screen rather than a VR program. And that kind of answers my questions about the art of it. I could call a great video 'game art'. But again--the music here is so moving as you two flow gracefully around. The 'making of' is Vi's specialty.

David Honour

How did you get the 3 parts to be so precisely the same length? Was there a metronome or some kind of constant time source that was edited out?

Kenny Tilton

No, Cecil, I am genuinely grateful for you reminding me how much more was in this piece than I was experiencing. I once had a surround sound set-up and still remember the moment I dropped Blade Runner in my DVD. Your comment helped!

Henry Segerman

Vi was wearing an ear piece under her hair, connected to a phone running a (slightly inaccurate, as it turned out) metronome app. I couldn’t hear it, which is my excuse for being slightly off on the triangle dings!

Henry Segerman

The lighting wasn’t fantastically bright, so there’s a bit of blur from that. Also the footage had to go through my transformation code, then Vi’s editing, which involved a few more renders before getting to the final product. So there were plenty of places for artifacts to creep in.

vihart

Yes, metronome was essential because timing has to be perfect between the three parts! You're the first person to notice. The reason my hair is down is to hide the earbud that goes to a metronome playing on my phone in my pocket. It took some practice to get used to paying attention to the metronome in addition to everything else (and the distraction of my hair getting in my way too. One of the many takes was ruined when I inhaled a strand halfway through!).

vihart

Oh yes and as Henry said the metronome turned out to be inaccurate, by 0.0528 BPM, which we figured out the hard way later. But with a little simple algebra we made everything work!

vihart

We're going to submit it to the short film festival at the Bridges Math Art conference (which is the best conference and very friendly, if anyone is interested). You're not an idiot. And there's a math museum in New York, we'll see if they reach out =P

vihart

And the question of what kinds of math we use is interesting because we use so many! Geometry, group theory, and topology are all hinted at in the making-of because of the symmetry group stuff, and to triplify the video there's geometric topology and complex plane stuff, and there was also a lot of elementary algebra and arithmetic for more standard video production stuff like figuring out the timings and how many pixels to offset things.

Randal Moore

One more Vi. You sent us a note of progress last month. I think you said you were learning a whole new software to syc. the music in with the video. What software was that? You also actually HARMONIZE with yourself here. So I know you are recording with at least two tracks. This is no VR game as Henry confirmed with me. It goes way beyond that, but at first were you trying to use a program for VR game or some computer game to get stereo? I don't want you and Henry to take time answering all my details so if there is no easy answer don't worry about it.

vihart

It's one audio track copied three times with a shift, just like the video! (though each copy has multiple sources.) Video game software isn't necessary for placing sounds in spots thanks to a sound format called Ambisonics, which is just made up of a bunch of audio channels that together represent a sound field. It's up to the video player to interpret the ambisonic sound properly, and YouTube recently added this functionality. At first I was trying to use a DAW called Reaper to do the ambisonics, but some of the plugins I was trying to use don't work with the latest versions so that fell apart after a bit. But then it turned out the latest version of my video editing software (adobe premiere pro) added support for ambisonic sound, so I bought that. It's super clunky though. So in the end I used Reaper for recording and Premiere for panning the different copies and sources around the sphere. I'd like to figure out how to do it all properly in Reaper though, which would allow me to make it sound much better and have more depth.

Andrew Reid

This is amazing. I was thinking, as I was watching it, that I love the math and certainly I am on-board with the peace theme, but, I thought, I've never really cared for that particular choral style, particularly solo. But now, after having watched the making-of and sitting here writing comments, the music is making itself known in the back of my head, and it's really quite pleasant. You may have broadened my palate! That's nifty!

Randal Moore

I was explaining how I can apply some of this to writing and performing music but i've written enough as it is. I appreciate these answers a great deal, Vi. Math is just as much as a universal language as is music.

Rajat Tibrewal

I wanted to "save" this video -- and watch it when it had my full attention and presence of mind. I finally watched it and the "making of". I am stunned, my head hurts, I am feeling overwhelmed and I am welled up. Thank you Vi & Henry!

George Mavronikolas

I joined patreon just to make this suggestion :). I was considering your space-time diagrams in "the making of". And further these brilliant video wrapping transformations where you show the video mapping to spheres and to discs. Finally in the explanation video there are all the stacked "disc" images with threads to show the 3d space-time paths of the actors and objects.... I was reminded of a way to actually turn video data directly into one image which represents a 3d "space-time" evolution of the video., as a single image. One scheme could go like this...take the disc version of the video, color key on an "actor", like Vi Hart's blue shirt, and cut away the rest of video... So now we have just three blue shirts moving around on the disc video, and the rest is black or transparent etc... Now we squish the video "disc" to slightly horizontal ellipse, to represent a cross-section of cylinder, drawn in perspective. Now the fun... You add each frame of the video to the same image...but slightly translate each frame in vertical direction. The result is an image that looks like a cylinder with three blue "threads" twisting around inside it... That's just one way...another is to stack every frame, not just one element, but the whole image, stack the same way but have every frame set transparent. That result looks like a ghostly MRI if there is enough contrast in the video source. Example project. Video of cross-sections of human body is played on monitor that is moved past a camera taking single long exposure... Looks like this <a href="http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/04/a-video-of-1871-slices-of-the-human-body/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/04/a-video-of-1871-slices-of-the-human-body/</a> EDIT: So sorry about this formatting.. I'm new. Having trouble editing this comment.... Anyway, this link from the article has more images done this way... <a href="http://www.triangulation.jp/2011/03/1231.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.triangulation.jp/2011/03/1231.html</a> I'm in awe of all these video geometry transformations you all are doing and imagine my suggestion would be something well within your tool set.

Alberto Bregliano

When will we see you in the cast of some scifi/time-travel movie? Come on Hollywood people offer Vi a nice contract!

Leo Comerford

Why use a clawhammer on the triangle? Apparently they ended up using a clawhammer on the tubular bells in the original "Tubular Bells" recording to make them louder <a href="https://youtu.be/cf5N3pyN1lE?t=1926" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/cf5N3pyN1lE?t=1926</a> , but it doesn't seem as if a clawhammer would be louder than a striker in this case. Just because it's bigger and can stand up on its own?

vihart

If it would get me a low enough Erdös-Bacon number I'd be pretty tempted to say yes ;]

vihart

Yes, it's mostly to be big enough to see. And partly because claw hammers are both constructive and destructive tools, adding to the symbolism of a song asking for peace. Also the video's secret alternative title is "90 hammers" (piano nerds back me up here)

George Mavronikolas

I joined Patreon just to comment on this with a suggestion for how to convert a video into a single "space time" image. I left a rather long comment. But this Patreon platform has been unresponsive for days now. My comments don't post... Original comment missing. No word for days now after support ticket. So I don't want to be a pest...I don't know if my comment was simply rejected or if you never got to see it. Anyway trying again... Am I allowed to comment here? Can you see and hear me :) (if so comment to follow on turning video data into static 3d objects)

Rajat Tibrewal

I feel honored to be allowed to give this post its 42nd like.

George Mavronikolas

Thanks for indulging my visibility. I'll cut the long rambling reply where I try to say everything I said before. Bullet point version... There is a way to render videos into "space time diagrams". This example project should illustrate the idea without me rambling on ... <a href="http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/04/a-video-of-1871-slices-of-the-human-body/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/04/a-video-of-1871-slices-of-the-human-body/</a> and more pictures here <a href="http://www.triangulation.jp/2011/03/1231.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.triangulation.jp/2011/03/1231.html</a> So one idea for converting "Peace for Triple Piano" into a 3d object using video editing. Take the disc version of the video. Squish the image to a horizontal ellipse (to appear as a circle foreshortened by perspective). Next one can stack all the frames of the video vertically to create a cylinder much like your handmade 3d, cylindrical, space-time sculpture. The frames need transparency to give us the "MRI" version. Here the actors and objects are the "internal organs" and with enough color color contrast we could maybe see all the space-time trajectories of the moving actors and objects. Similar to using a "contrast dye", and for the same purposes, if the original disc video is color-keyed on an actor, like the blue shirt, the rest of the image data can be subtracted leaving just three blue shirts swimming around in an empty frame. If we then stack video frames into a single image we see the "threads", the trajectories of each of the three shirts and how they move through the space-time cylinder. Just some ideas if you do more of these in the future. Longtime fan...favorite has got to be "The Bird Bowl and the Laser Bat" in terms of lasting and guiding impressions. Please share with Henry Segerman if you think he might find it interesting. (Glad to elaborate on anything but I imagine you two only need to see that first example to show you all you need to see. My only additional input is just noting that such an image can also be directly constructed with the raw video data ) Thanks for reading!

Jon Levell

Wow, that making of was awesome

Randal Moore

Vi---super long detailed comments will vanish if one edits it at all. You are one of just a few people who will respond to a community post every once in a while. Also--sometimes when folks don't hit 'enter' on the keyboard--the comment is not set and it will vanish. I tend to write too much because I observe so closely and gain artistic insight from your work. But even by saying that, my comment is already too long.

Colin

Have been listening to this non-stop for the last few days. Definitely one of my favorite videos! (Twelve Tones, however, will always be my favorite. Philosophical music is totally amazing.)

George

Thank you for making this. I shared it with a friend who was having a rough week and it really cheered him up. The making of video is amazing as well. I think this is as close as you can get for creating a video metaphor for a musical round. The only thing I can't decide on is if the art or the math is more beautiful. I mean clearly both are beautiful, but if this was a book, would I put it on the math shelf or the art shelf? I guess I'd just buy two copies and put one on each...

Rick

I just wanted to thank you for your beautiful piece. I finally got to see it on Edge (none of my other browsers would display it ... I know, I gotta work on the problem). So beautiful, in so many different ways.