Image
The images and animations for Watching Europa were created exclusively with U&I Software's extraordinary ArtMatic Designer. AMD uses a visually enabled object-oriented mathematical programming language that equates to a graphical environment in very much the same way as musical synthesis technology does to sound and music.
One of the great strengths of AMD is that it allows a very powerful level of creative 'mutation' in all parts of the mathematical structure. With this flexibility, I am able to explore possible Europan lifeforms without imposing what would necessarily be arbitrary scientific speculation on what they should look like. So, while I set the rules for describing the creatures that swim in front of Watching Europa's camera, I also allow for some wild magic to come into play. Often, as I was creating these images, I was as surprised at what appeared before me as I imagine we would be in the event of seeing real Europan creatures. I hope you feel the same level of excitement.
Sound
Sound and music for Watching Europa has been created with a variety of sonic tools. Spectrasonics' Omnisphere provides tones and harmonies as does Native Instruments' versatile Reaktor. Underwater 'creature' sounds have been rendered using Sonic Charge's SynPlant. In a way that is similar to my working process with ArtMatic Designer, SynPlant allows me to use controlled randomness to define my sound palette. A feature of SynPlant is that it can 'grow' sounds from seed ideas, and those 'seedlings' can be used to inform further generations of a particular sound. Extremely surprising organic sonic pictures can be formed in this manner.
The tracks also feature hydrophone recordings provided by my good friend (& cave diver) Greg Ryan. I've used Altiverb convolution mapping of various flavours on certain aspects of the sound.