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Warning: Contains some flashing images

Max Cooper:
I've been working on a commission for Salzburg festival and Barbican London to create a new show based around Italy. So I've been delving into some historic Italian music and science to find ideas for new audio and visual content. The most famous of all sequences, the Fibonacci Sequence, had to be included.

Yoshi Sodeoka, who made my Spike visual project, had a beautiful system linking the Fibonacci Sequence to starling flight, and we started chatting about how to make music for his visual system for the Seme project. Initially I came up with a synth jam with no percussion, which fit the feeling of the story we were telling, but we needed more expression around the rhythmical Fibonacci sequence mapping out the time differences between each number 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.

It's quite an unmusical rhythmical sequence, and sounded quite wooden through my synths, so I went to a rhythm maestro, Kwake Bass, the drummer from Speakers Corner Quartet amongst many others. I visited Kwake in his London studio and set him the challenge of playing the sequence.

After a short warm up he said he was ready, and then went on to unleash a mad barrage of drumming expression and sweat flying. It was amazing to see, and I tried to bring as much of that live improvised rhythmical madness into the piece. The version on streaming services has the full blast of drums, but for the video we pulled them back a touch because the visual sequenced demanded it.

I often work that way with visual collaborators, adjusting the music as much as the visual as we bounce ideas back and forth to find the best solution. So, that's it, another audiovisual experiment, I hope you enjoy it.

There's a bunch more, very different experiments on the Seme EP too, with 500 year old Holy music meets synths and bass, opera singers, piano improvs and cello, and some of my usual patches and melodies too, plus some more, beautiful visual collaboration projects to show you soon too. Thanks for having a look and a listen x


Yoshi Sodeoka:
"In our second collaboration since “Spike” in 2020, it all began in the summer of 2023, when we started chatting about our shared interest in blending art, math, and science. Drawn to the concept of the Golden Ratio, I continued my exploration with simulations featuring birds, moths, and spiders – all those creatures.

While visually different from “Spike”, this new video "Fibonacci Sequence" isn’t quite the departure it may seem. In my mind, both projects share a common thread of exploration. “Spike” delved into abstraction through feedback systems, while "Fibonacci Sequence" focuses more on the observable intricacies of nature. However, at their core, both videos are rooted in the concept of swarming. Whether abstract or figurative, the motion and behaviors showcased in both are driven by the same underlying physics principles. "Fibonacci Sequence" serves as a continuation of this exploration, offering a closer observation of how nature behaves within the framework of these concepts.

Recognizing the parallels between flocking birds and fluid simulations, I set out to merge these elements into a visual story that's both engaging and thoughtprovoking.

In a backandforth with Max, we bounced ideas off each other, each element building on the last. As I finetuned my videos, guided by the Golden Ratio, Max worked his magic to complement those visual rhythms with a symphony of beats and melodies. It was a collaborative effort, gradually coming together to create the experience that is "Fibonacci Sequence."


CREDITS
Music + concept: Max Cooper
https://maxcooper.net
  / maxcoopermax  

Video director: Yoshi Sodeaoka
https://sodeoka.com
  / yoshisodeoka  

Label: Mesh
https://meshmeshmesh.net/
  / meshmeshmesh_  

Management: The Wild Seeds
https://www.thewildseeds.com
  / the_wild_seeds  

All video & audio copyright is owned by Max Cooper and Mesh no use without permission.