We Will Live On - The Dirt_03

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Gunther Kleinert

2024

Plotter Drawing

25.5"x19.75"
pigmented ink pens on 170 gr/m2 paper

Description

The Dirt by Gunther Kleinert is a visual representation of ten songs from the album _We Will Live On _by Benjamin Wynn, aka DERU, rendered as pen-plotted drawings. Created during the Covid-19 pandemic and with rising awareness of climate change, this project raises the question of who and what remains in the aftermath of a crisis.

Since 2017, Kleinert has used algorithms to transform sound into visual compositions. For each track of We Will Live On, Kleinert extracted data on frequency, loudness, and pitch. He mapped volume to vertical lines, and pitch to hatched blocks. The drawing is like sheet music that the viewer can almost hear. A vintage pen plotter executed it, and half-empty pens gave the backgrounds an irregular, unreproducible texture.

This series takes the form of a playlist with drawings aligned to the songs and arranged in sequence, in order to present the work across two mediums. The visualization and translation of data have always been important to computer art. Kleinert’s work is an attempt to use these processes to create a particularly emotional experience.