Peter Saville's Unknown Pleasures AV

March 8th 2009

Everytime I saw Peter Saville's Cover for Joy Division's Unknown Pleasure the idea of making it real time as a Audiovisualiser popped into my mind.

It seemed something quite simple, but once you get down to doing it you start seeing things you didn't see the first time. Yes, this happens every time, but this one impressed and frustrated me for the actual complexity after its apparent simplicity (not only visual but technical).

The end result isn't 100% perfect, but does the job I think. The original album happens to be from 1979, so lets make this like a little 30 year anniversary homage.



I'm sharing the sources for this one in case anyone wants to improve it, or in case anyone wonders about the little tricks used on it ;)

23 comments written so far...

I always thought that cover was an AV or at least representative of one. Nice work.
March 9th 2009
Jareth Bone
From wikipedia:

"The front cover image comes from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and was originally drawn with black lines on a white background. It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR B1919+21—often referred to in the context of this album by its older name, CP 1919.[5] The image was suggested by Bernard Sumner and the cover design is credited to Joy Division, Peter Saville and Chris Mathan. The back cover of the album contains no track listings, leaving a blank table where one would expect the listings to be. The original release came in a textured sleeve.[3]"
March 9th 2009
mr.doob
Damn, I had the exact same idea. But sadly, I have the exact opposite amount of geek know how. Well done Doobs! I've done a bit of work making it into a dynamic After Effects video, it *almost* works.
March 9th 2009
jason
Wow, very cool - well done!
March 9th 2009
majman
Niiiiice !
March 11th 2009
George Profenza
This is so cool
March 14th 2009
Rich
Wow great! All these creepy creatures that suddenly appear out of nowhere!! This is really a masterpiece :)
March 16th 2009
DieTapete
Nice one! I quite like it! I saw Keith Peters on Flash in the Can doing something similar, i like it :)

If you want to know more about this, check www.artfromcode.com It's quite nice!!
April 5th 2009
Jankees
Right now, I'm now reading your code like Salieri reading Mozart sheets in "Amadeus" while he was sick.

Amazing job, man. Not to mention the subject!
April 8th 2009
xixa
thank you
April 14th 2009
steven
sweet! I used this concept for one of my visualizers....
April 21st 2009
jord3t
Super post, Need to mark it on Digg
Saurooon
June 5th 2009
Saurooon
I've been listening to Joy Division for over 20 years now. This is wondeful - thank you.
September 16th 2009
Mike
nice work. Are you still playing with audio visualizers?
I am trying to get flash to detect from onboard sound card in realtime, do you have any experience with this?

cheers
September 20th 2009
inquisitive
Everytime I saw this your visualization of Peter Saville's cover looking through you blog I want to share with you same visualization we made in same time, about Feb 2009, for presentation of documental film about Joy Division.

But every time I forgot about it or anything else. Anyway I want to show this one:

http://www.lookatme.ru/cities/moscow/events/60996

It was nice to me to see this your work right away after I've done the same.

And by the way, thanks for your works and for your lab!
October 1st 2009
Sergey Filippov
That's interesting Sergey! I've seen is visualised in that way somewhere else (having all whole graph deforming at once). I guess it makes more sense that way.

When I experimented with it I found Flash too slow for doing it your way, not sure how you pulled it off :)

Nice work!
October 1st 2009
mr.doob
%20AND%201=2
August 30th 2010
anonymous
AND 1=1/*
August 30th 2010
anonymous
AND 1=2/*
August 30th 2010
anonymous
' AND '1'='1
August 30th 2010
anonymous
' AND '1'='2
August 30th 2010
anonymous
' AND 1=1/*
August 30th 2010
anonymous
' AND 1=2/*
August 30th 2010
anonymous

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