Skip to main content

David Gilmour Composes a Soundtrack to Arthur C. Clarke’s Documentary on Mind-Bending Fractals

An observer once called the Mandelbrot Set “The Thumbprint of God,” the simple equation that led to the discovery of fractal geography, chaos theory, and why games like No Man’s Sky even exist. In 1994, Arthur C. Clarke, writer of both science fiction and science fact, narrated a one-hour documentary on the new mathematics, called Fractals: The Colors of Infinity. If that sounds familiar, dear reader, it’s because we’ve told you about it long ago. But it’s worth revisiting, and it’s worth mentioning that the soundtrack was created by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.

To be honest, at first I wasn’t really hearing that Floyd vibe, just some pleasant synth-strings you could find on any number of documentaries. But then Clarke explains the implication of the Mandelbrot equation, ending it with “This really is infinity.” And then Boom, the acid hit.

Or rather, the rainbow computer graphics of the endless zoom hit, and it was unmistakably Gilmour—cue up 5:19 and be careful with that fractal, Eugene. This happens again at 14:30, 25:12, 31:07, 35:46, 38:22, 43:22, 44:51, and 50:06 for those with an itchy scrubbing finger. But stick around for the whole doc, as the history of how we got to the equation, its precedents in nature and art, and the implications only hinted at in the program, all make for interesting viewing.

The music will remind you in places of “Shine On Your Crazy Diamond”, “Obscured by Clouds,” and “On the Run.” When a DVD was released years later, a special feature isolated just Gilmour’s music and the fractal animation.

Gilmour has contributed soundtrack work to other programs. He has an uncredited performance on Guy Pratt’s soundtrack from 1995’s Hackers; incidental music for 1992’s Ruby Takes a Trip with Ruby Wax; and a 1993 documentary on the arts and drug use called The Art of Tripping.

There are no official releases of this soundtrack work, but one user has put up 16 minutes of the Colours of Infinity music over at SoundCloud.

 

Related Content:

David Gilmour, David Crosby & Graham Nash Perform the Pink Floyd Classic, “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” (2006)

Watch David Gilmour Play the Songs of Syd Barrett, with the Help of David Bowie & Richard Wright

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the Notes from the Shed podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

David Gilmour Composes a Soundtrack to Arthur C. Clarke’s Documentary on Mind-Bending Fractals is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.



from Open Culture https://ift.tt/3yb2noO
via Ilumina

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Board Game Ideology — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #108

https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/partiallyexaminedlife/PMP_108_10-7-21.mp3 As board games are becoming increasingly popular with adults, we ask: What’s the relationship between a board game’s mechanics and its narrative? Does the “message” of a board game matter? Your host Mark Linsenmayer is joined by game designer Tommy Maranges , educator Michelle Parrinello-Cason , and ex-philosopher Al Baker to talk about re-skinning games, designing player experiences, play styles, game complexity, and more. Some of the games we mention include Puerto Rico, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Sorry, Munchkin, Sushi Go, Welcome To…, Codenames, Pandemic, Occam Horror, Terra Mystica, chess, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Photosynthesis, Spirit Island, Escape from the Dark Castle, and Wingspan. Some articles that fed our discussion included: “ The Board Games That Ask You to Reenact Colonialism ” by Luke Winkie “ Board Games Are Getting Really, Really Popular ” by Darron Cu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music: An Interactive, Encyclopedic Data Visualization of 120 Years of Electronic Music

In a very short span of time, the descriptor “electronic music” has come to sound as overly broad as “classical.” But where what we (often incorrectly) call classical developed over hundreds of years, electronic music proliferated into hundreds of fractal forms in only decades. A far steeper quality curve may have to do with the ease of its creation, but it’s also a factor of this accelerated evolution. Music made by machines has transformed since its early 20th-century beginnings from obscure avant-garde experiments to massively popular genres of global dance and pop. This proliferation, notes Ishkur—designer of Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music —hasn't always been to the good. Take what he calls “trendwhoring,” a phenomenon that spawns dozens of new works and subgenera in short order, though it’s arguable whether many of them should exist. Ishkur, describes this process below in an excerpt from his erudite, sardonic “Frequently Unasked Questions”: If fart noises were sudde...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Led Zeppelin Stole Their Way to Fame and Fortune

When Bob Dylan released his 2001 album  Love and Theft , he lifted the title from a  book of the same name by Eric Lott , who studied 19th century American popular music’s musical thefts and contemptuous impersonations. The ambivalence in the title was there, too: musicians of all colors routinely and lovingly stole from each other while developing the jazz and blues traditions that grew into rock and roll. When British invasion bands introduced their version of the blues, it only seemed natural that they would continue the tradition, picking up riffs, licks, and lyrics where they found them, and getting a little slippery about the origins of songs. This was, after all, the music’s history. In truth, most UK blues rockers who picked up other people’s songs changed them completely or credited their authors when it came time to make records. This may not have been tradition but it was ethical business practice. Fans of Led Zeppelin, on the other hand, now listen to their...
Post a Comment
Read more