VEIL: an interview with Claudio Bellini about his creative process
Veil is an audiovisual experiment by Claudio Bellini and Michele Deiana, powered by Umanesimo Artificiale.
Filippo Rosati: Ciao Claudio, thank you for accepting to answer these few questions and for running us through the creative process of Veil.
Claudio Bellini: Ciao Filippo, my pleasure!
FR: Let’s start from the concept behind Veil and what does it represent.
CB: Veil was born from the idea of connection, which we all feel strongly in this period: we are connected to others by virtual networks where we are the nodes and the links are formed by our relationships. I was inspired by the mesh of computer graphics where the vertices are the fundamental element, their position in space and the connections between them determine the topology of the surface of the mesh itself and how it reflects light; it seemed interesting to me to use a virtual mesh as a similitude to somehow evoke a network of relationships.
FR: How does the structure of the video respect the guidelines of the project (to make a video to be experienced through the Instagram stories), and how does the story evolve?
CB: The video has different levels of understanding; following the strict limitations of the Instagram stories, the narrative is fragmented into several sections and these sections in turn have other subdivisions, making even the smallest fragments independent and self-determined when viewed individually. The evolution over time is a sort of movement in space and a space in movement, the transformations follow one after the other, giving an impression of linearity when view as a whole.
FR: Can you tell us a bit about the production steps?
Yes, sure. The first step was to build a virtual environment where to move the mesh and to position the light sources; I often work in theatres with lights and spotlights, so a careful attention to every detail and every shades of light is also reflected in the video. Simultaneously I have also started to work on materials, to make the light respond in a way that was satisfactory for me. I haven’t followed any theoretical rule or guideline, but just my taste, in order to reach a result that reflected the vision I had in mind from the beginning. Obviously, along the process, the errors and new discoveries influenced the construction of the work.
After I was done with the virtual space, the lights and the materials, I focused on the meshes and their transformations, respecting the concept restrictions of 15 seconds. Therefore, every 15 seconds the is a change in the video (not always radical, but there is a change), whether it is a new room, a vertex displacement or any type of processing. In this second part of the production, I have also worked on the rigging of the arm, using the Blender metarig and recording the movements of the arm and the fingers with the real time animation Blender add-on.
Once I have identified the transformations that seemed most effective, I worked on the textures of the eyes and the arms. For the eyes, the texture is made of two images and the interpolation between them follows the music flow; for the arms, I used the shaders from Blender, starting with procedural basis function texture generator and automating the noise function to reach the effect of moving textures you can see in the video.
Lastly, some final post-production, by adding bloom in some parts and a slight color correction.
FR: What software did you use?
CB: I mainly used Blender 2.82. It is a software that I love, it is free and very powerful, with infinite possibilities of customization thanks to the implementation of python scripts.
The addOSC add-on by maybites is in fact written in python and you don’t need to be a programmer to use it. The add-on allows you to communicate via OSC (open sound control) with Blender and I used it in the part of the video from 2:00 to 2:45 minutes.
The other software I have used is Max/MSP, which allowed me to control the audio signal as a control parameter for some transformations of the mesh: rotation, contraction/expansion.
Thanks to the non-destructive modifiers, the workflow of Blender offers a speed of idea prototyping which helped me a lot in the sketch of the ideas and their subsequent development.
Blender and Max/MSP are two extremely powerful and flexible softwares that allows you to shape anything.
FR: Who composed the music and how did you coordinate with sound artist?
CB: The music for the video has been composed by Michele Deiana. I let Michele answer this question.
MD: I think it’s quite interesting when you find someone with whom you don’t need to coordinate anything!
Claudio and I know each other for many years, and to collaborate with him was like a fluid and spontaneous creative act in which our two (very!) different languages merged naturally, creating a new kind of artistic dimension.
The entire work is just a sensory and emotional experience in which the audience can decide to enter or not, and to stop the journey or to continue going deep in the abyss. It is like when we are discovering someone, slowly starting to remove the veil that covers our depths. And when we start to see what is there, we get scared and enchanted at the same time.”
FR: To conclude, how would you recommend the users to enjoy the video?
CB: I leave the choice to the viewers. Maybe watching it from the beginning to the end (from the first story to the last) can be the first approach; after that I find it quite funny to jump between sections/stories to make a sort of remix. Some sections are loops, easy to navigate. The video has been thought so that every user will create his/her own version of Veil.
FR: Great. Thank you very much Claudio.
CB: Thank you for the opportunity.
Claudio Bellini (@cloud.i0) — Video — Claudio Bellini, trained guitarist, studied composition and new technologies at the Venice conservatory, where he became passionate about electronic music, new media for art and musical programming. Claudio is a creative coder who divides his time between technical development of multimedia installations and creation of artistic works. He is a founding member of V.E.R-V.: a network of composers and musicians interested in investigating new models for artistic experimentation.
Michele Deiana (@mich_deiana) — Music — Michele Deiana is a composer based in Venice. After his graduation in Composition and New Technologies at the Venice Conservatoire, he worked with international renowned organisations such as La Biennale di Venezia, Fondazione Teatro La Fenice and Mario Del Monaco Theatre. Michele is a co-founder of V.E.R-V. / https://www.micheledeiana.com/
