Creating the Cube 1 Videos - Part 2: As an Auditory Artist

(TI writes:)

Creating Visual Works as an Auditory Artist

While I have studied music in a somewhat systematic way—learning music theory, composition techniques, and performance—when it comes to the visual arts, I’ve never had such a foundation. In fact, I used to skip art classes in school, rarely submitted assignments, and consistently received the lowest or second-lowest grades in a five-point grading system.

What I struggled with was the act of using my hands to carry out detailed tasks over an extended period. However, I’ve always enjoyed looking at paintings and artworks, researching how they were created, and thinking about what exactly draws me to certain pieces. I liked analyzing and organizing those impressions in my own way. I learnt about this at university.

Later on, as computers became more integrated into daily life and work, image editing features started to be included in office software. I began using these tools for creating materials at work, and soon started casually playing around with collages. To my surprise, my aversion to visual creation began to fade, and I even started to enjoy it—receiving occasional positive feedback from those around me.

This process mirrors the story of musician Towa Tei, who once said he used to hate music classes as a child. He couldn’t read sheet music, wasn’t good at playing instruments, had no interest in singing or performing, and overall disliked those aspects of music. But he loved listening to music. When computers and electronic instruments became more widespread, he discovered that he could create the kind of music he wanted to hear—without performing or singing himself. That’s when he fell in love with making music. I feel my journey with visuals is very much like that.

What I do isn’t really “producing videos” so much as “editing” them. Rather than making films, I’m simply pairing videos or images with music. I can’t do the reverse—adding music to visuals—and honestly, I can’t even imagine how that would work. In fact, I find it difficult to enjoy scenarios where music is added to visuals, such as in movies, TV shows, or games. When a grand orchestral score is laid over an emotional scene, I tend to feel completely detached.

As for the cover art of FMT tracks, I started making my own images in PowerPoint simply because I didn’t want to use existing cover art like others on SoundCloud. Once I learned that TM also enjoyed working with visuals, I left the visuals for tracks he composed in MuseScore to his own interpretation.

That said, my involvement was limited to still images and cover art. I had never really tried making videos, and I didn’t think it was an area I belonged in.

But one day, I discovered that Windows had a free video editing tool. Out of curiosity, I started playing with it and thought, “Maybe I can make something simple.” I added image sequences to some early FMT tracks and felt I’d managed to create something visually satisfying.

Later, I saw Instagram photos and videos from my friend Chiaki Tamura’s family trip to a hot spring. I wondered if I could use those as material to create an image video for one of FMT’s songs. When I asked her, she agreed, and we began working on it. I thought it was nearly complete, but she felt there were still parts that didn’t quite sit right. It took us a while to work through those revisions.

Looking back, the experience helped me gain many of the skills and instincts I needed. When FMT debuted on Kitchen. Label and we needed a promotional video, everything I’d learned during the collaboration with Chiaki Tamura came into play. Without that trial and error, I don’t think I could’ve made the video we ended up with.

My method of making videos is very different from how I compose music. It’s almost entirely intuitive—I don’t have a clear process or methodology. I start by loading the song into Clipchamp and placing various images into the timeline more or less at random. I keep rearranging them until the placement feels right to me. There’s no rulebook.

What I’m looking for is simply: “Does it feel good to look at? Is it engaging at that moment?” That’s my sole criterion.

The only real obstacles are technical: poor image quality, mismatched resolution or color, insufficient clip length, and so on.

However, I’m not satisfied with simply saying “it feels right.” I tend to ask, “Why does this feel right? Why do I like it?” When I analyzed it, I realized it mostly comes down to timing and duration, followed by composition and balance within the frame.

This means the subject matter or story in the footage is secondary. Of course, I consider whether the visuals and music are connected, but that’s not what makes something feel good intuitively.

When I’ve worked directly on a video, I can always explain why a certain image appears at a certain time. For example, it might appear exactly when a snare drum hits, or disappear just before a cymbal fades and the next note enters. But being precise isn't always best. In fact, the key seems to be how much you deviate from perfect alignment. It feels very similar to the pursuit of groove in music.

That deviation isn’t random, though. I feel there’s a kind of logic to it—say, offsetting an image by a 32nd note after a sound begins can give the sound a sense of expansion. Bringing it in slightly early emphasizes the attack of the sound. Again, this is very much like crafting a groove.

It also helps that I know the music inside out—I know exactly when each sound appears, down to the fraction of a second.

As for composition, I tend to favor symmetry, but I’m also conscious of how to break that balance slightly. Perfect symmetry can feel too neat and unmemorable. I intentionally offset things a little to make them stand out. It’s the same concept as shifting timing away from the beat—people tend to notice what’s out of place more than what’s perfectly aligned.

Still, I haven’t fully mastered that balance yet.

Interestingly, I don’t pay much attention to color or image quality. I have poor eyesight—severe myopia and astigmatism since childhood, and now presbyopia—so I don’t notice those details much. Also, those factors depend on viewing environments, such as the type and quality of the screen, making them harder to judge objectively.

That said, for people with proper visual arts training, those aspects are critical, and I sometimes find it difficult to communicate my ideas in that area.

Creating the Cube 1 Videos - Part 3: Born Out of Necessity

Creating the Cube 1 Videos - Part I: Between Reality and Unreality