BECHA-KPACHA is an algorithmic music video for the electronic musician COH. The song's tittle (pronounced Vesna Krasna) was taken from an old Russian poem and roughly translates "Spring the beautiful", though it can also mean "Spring the red."
The animation reference's traditional Russian folk patterns, commonly known as Hohloma. In these patterns, colorful plant leaves expand and twist around one another while fruit grows along side. These patterns were a starting point for this sound-responsive animation.
BECHA-KPACHA was programmed using openFrameworks. It uses Kyle McDonald's ofxFFT library for audio analysis and James George's ofxTimeline for arranging the different visual objects and behaviors. COH provided me with a collection different audio tracks — synthesizer arpeggiators, percussion, bleeps and bass — which were used to trigger and animate various shapes in three dimensional space.
BECHA-KPACHA is one of a handful of videos that accompany the release of his album "To Beat" on Editions Mego. Other videos, by Julieta Triangular, Mariann Lois-Iron and Paul Prudence can be found on COH's Vimeo channel.
Jeremy Rotsztain (b. 1977 in Toronto, Canada) is an artist and software programmer working with computer graphics to explore new modes of abstraction—across video installations, virtual reality worlds, mobile phone applications, and digital prints.