MR

JellyFilm

Interactive401

JellyFilm

Jellyfish, tracked by code and turned to liquid chrome. Cut to the beat.

A computer watches jellyfish and decides how to see them.

It tracks every twitch, gives each animal its own way of being seen, and edits the film to the music. The edit list is written by a script that reads the track. Every cut lands on a beat.

Year
2026
Made in
TouchDesigner, OpenCV, GLSL
Length
1:23, 1080p
Footage
Singapore Aquarium, 21.09.2024
Music
Miami (Original Mix), 94.85 BPM
Watch
YouTube

The score

Thirty-two bars. One bar is 2.53 seconds. Choose a chapter to play from there.

0:51The drop. Drips fall from the bells on every kick.
0:03Spectra. Thermal, glass and night vision in one frame.
0:45Breakdown. The HUD dissolves.
0:56JellyChrome. A height field that reflects the scene.
1:08Mirror fold, with a rippling seam.
1:15Quad mirror, just before the melt.

How it works

Built as a TouchDesigner network, generated from Python and GLSL, finished in ffmpeg.

  1. 01

    Track

    OpenCV finds every region that moved, down to a single tentacle. Camera shake is cancelled first. Each region gets a box that holds until something moves again.

  2. 02

    See

    Each jellyfish gets a persistent ID and one of six scan modes. Where two overlap, their blend modes mix.

  3. 03

    Cut

    A script reads the track's beats and writes the edit list. Kicks punch the zoom and spawn drips. Hats drive the glitches.

  4. 04

    Chrome

    A GLSL height field reflects a studio strip and the scene itself, with thin-film rims and dispersive refraction.

Six scan modesThermalX-rayGlassIridescentNight visionSonar

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