Cabaret Voltaire - "Kirlian Photograph" -- Waveform visualization
129This is a visualization of "Kirlian Photograph" by Cabaret Voltaire, released in their 1979 album "Mix-Up"
Kirlian photography is a photographic technique which involves high-voltage charged objects over photographic film. The film registers the corona around the objects, giving it a weird ghostly appearance. The technique is claimed to register the "aura" of objects and living tissue, but the workings of this photographic method are well understood enough to dismiss those claims.
Either way, the pictures are pretty cool looking, and I tried to capture their looks in this visualization.
This is basically the song's waveform wrapped around a logarithmic spiral. The center of the spiral is the past waveforms. Each frame leaves an afterimage that decays in a 33 color palette. This worked pretty well to simulate the "feel" of the corona effects you see in the Kirlian photos, especially given the song's heavy use of white noise, which shows as random, chaotic peaks.
The song itself won't please everyone, but I like it a lot. Been wanting to post it here for a while now.