Esteban Diácono: Let Yourself Feel

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This is an animation project Diácono created after being inspired by Olafur Arnalds music. The song that fueled Diácono ‘s project is called Ljósið. When explaining how we went about his project he said, “I first imported the audio and set up 2 sound keys layers, one for the piano and one for the strings. Then I worked the particles and the particle subsystem and linked things like the emission, the turbulence, the velocity, the spin amplitude and the strength of the fields to the sound keys outputs. Then I set up the colors with 2 different palettes, and well, after that there was a lot of trial and error in order to achieve what I was looking for. There’s a lot of randomness involved in here, so there was also a lot of luck, of course.” Understanding Diácono ‘s process is nice background information to have after watching his video. However, it doesn’t necessarily make any sense to me. I still can’t fully comprehend how he created such a beautiful piece. I did pick up on the fact that he had to use technology though, which is an ongoing theme in modern art today. Diácono ‘s work is so visually stimulating. The colors flow in an out like smooth silk gliding in water. They mirror the music’s beat which adds to the beauty of the piece. It’s after the fact –after you realize that it’s not all digitally made– that you question how it was created. Personally, I don’t need to know. I found myself left in this mesmerizing state after watching such a great combination of music and visual appeal. That’s enough for me– it trumps the technological aspect. Yet at the same time, I recognize how essential the technology was in allowing a piece to be created that resulted in such a pure and special reaction.