“Bagatelle I” by Schnellebuntebilder

Bagatelle I is a music video for the saxophone quartet sonic.art created by Schnellebuntebilder, a German trio comprised of Johannes Timpernagel, Robert Pohle and Sebastian Huber. It’s exciting to watch the jittery energy of the lines and the playfulness of the imagery which at times nearly collapses into pure abstraction, though I wish they’d resisted the temptation to insert the fully-rendered images of the musicians–suggestion can be more alluring than a full reveal.

I’m not exactly sure about the technique used, but looking at the behind-the-scenes photos, it appears that the musicians were filmed first and the artwork was created over the live-action footage. Their production notes state that, “The astonishing and impulsive moments of György Ligetis’ composition was visualized by audio reactive and generatively created graphics and accomplished by hand-drawn animations.”