Live Performance Multi-Projection

Simple Harmonic Motion (SHM) are a four-piece band playing original, contemporary, classical instrumental music accompanied by stunning visuals and venues. They have performed in the UK, Denmark, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, mainly in very large churches including Amiens Cathedral, where the video projections and ambient acoustics provide the perfect environment for the group’s music.

With their music being based on stories, the band felt animations were the best way to express the narratives and came to AR Media for creative concepts.

Having the desire to take their performances tour and reach as many people as possible, their tours in Northern Europe and the UK have been accompanied by multi-projected animations.

Illustrating & Animating SHM

Lamia was the first of the five animations we produced to embody the characters, themes and legends of Keats narrative poems as the music is played. Each project needed its own unique style and Lamia was inspired by the greek artworks “Black-Figure Style Decoration” created in Corinth (c. 620 – c.530 BC). The animation was styled to bring a drawn fable on parchment to life.

Introducing SHM to Dance

Simple Harmonic Motion had at first been wary when we had mentioned the use of dancers for physical expression, but following the success of the use of dance in the Lamia animation, wanted to now embrace this as a basis for the remaining videos. The use of physical performers was further embraced as the remaining animations were produced.

The fourth video in the series, the classic ‘Ode to Psyche’ even went as far as to use only dance rather than physical expression and AR Media created an expressionistic environment for this to sit in.

The results

The videos have been a great success with many audience members expressing their appreciation of how the addition of the new videos enhances and compliments the music.

With the Keats poem series now complete AR Media are working with SHM on a new series of videos for both ancient mythology & lore legends. The first in the new series is the story of Lazarus and Dives, where we are using illustration, animation puppetry and parallaxed imagery.