“Sometimes I ask myself, what is the point of all this musical manipulation? How far should we take the exploration of music performance technology? Then someone manages to combine talent, expertise, and vision all in one amazing application that reminds you – oh that’s why. Because you never know when something magical will emerge.” - Ean Golden on Amon Tobin.

For the better part of two decades, electronic music maven Amon Tobin has dazzled audiences with mind-expanding cuts that marry vinyl samples with his uncanny sonic sensibility. Despite his impressive résumé, the Brazilian-born visionary balked at touring his new album Isam 2.0. Tobin insisted this latest disc—which he calls a “sound sculpture” of field recordings—didn’t have the right vibe to ignite the dance floor, so the stage show needed to evolve beyond his DJ-centric performances.

Going to his performance, fans will experience an audio-visual adventure that has already drawn praise from Cirque du Soleil. He performs inside a white cube, centrally attached to other cubes, and they were all stacked in a geometrical pattern across the stage. Fast-moving abstract images aligned to the music are projected upon them, both individually and as an entirety, an uneven canvas.

The wall of cubes resembled something you’d find in nature, like a salt crystal. Most of the time you can’t see Mr. Tobin as he worked in his encasement. But every once in a while a small light turns on inside the cube and there he is, administering his machines, nodding his head, with beard and baseball cap, the man inside the fractal (Figure 19).
What Amon Tobin is working on what is known as projection mapping, which it is not necessarily a new technique, though it’s rapidly increasing in both popularity and complexity among the masses making it more difficult for companies producing the content to stay competitive in the craft. Tobin is using the expertise of a technology crew in the creation of his shows: V Squared director Vello Virkhaus, designer and programmer Peter Sistrom and Leviathan chief scientist Matt Daly along with the help of Bryant Place.

The application used is TouchDesigner, Derivative's visual programming environment, and does the projection mapping, video playback, Kinect response, real time effects and more.
It is pretty clear that the art of Amon Tobin wouldn’t be possible without the help of computer graphics and in particular without a software like TouchDesigner.
More, 4D in mathematics is a very abstract concept in which this additional dimension is indistinguishable, yet acknowledged. This unknown relates to the pronounced visual effect the mapped structure of Tobin creates for the viewer. What is fascinating is that he gives viewers an idea of what it might be like to see beyond 3D space, to see all points simultaneously for both the exterior and the virtual interior of the set. The combination of this mapped effect and Amon's music produced some very intense emotional reactions from people. Despite the fact that each show is primarily pre-set and automated, in order to allow the visuals proper synchronization with the album’s unctuous tunes, a larger cube, set into the center of the structure, served as the cockpit for Tobin throughout the set. No doubt relying on simpler tools like subtle audio manipulations and dramatic filter sweeps, it was invigorating to see the artist “piloting” his work and directing the flow of the performance.

Amon Tobin’s stage shows are the most current testament to how astonishingly synchronous a musical performance can be with an accompanying visual display (Figure 20 and 21), and how detailed and attentive said display can be to all of the elements of the audio work. With no floods, strobes, or lasers to speak of, Tobin’s show relies entirely upon images and sound, melding the two at a level that has rarely been seen outside of establishments like the Museum of Modern Art. The complexity and intricacy are truly breathtaking, even for the more party-minded electronic music fan who simply wants a mind bending treat for their eyes to accompany the wildly-encompassing thunderstorm of sound they are entrenched in.

One of the most interesting aspects to me about Amon Tobin’s work is that he is not just presenting a different reality in a virtual space, but he introduces a different point of view, his point of view. He is, in fact, part of the projection, he is not projecting from the viewer point of view, and he stands inside his own composition and projects on himself.

This allows him to experience live the reaction of his public. This element is almost a contemporary version of what other painters during the centuries did: painting themselves inside their work. But if during the Renaissance period self-portraits can be seen as projections of self, for contemporary artists it looks like everything is about the interactivity and interaction with the viewers.

Artists like Mantegna and Alberti, Raphael, Parmigianino, Titian, Sofonisba Anguissola, and Annibale Carracci constructed themselves pictorially and used these self-representations. Self-portraits mediated between the creators artistic self and his or her Renaissance audience.

Figure 21 and 22, Amon Tobin, from the performance Isam 2.0, Photo by Valerio Berdini. From liveon35mm.com, 2012.

Those artists who experimented with autonomous self-portraiture usually worked for courts, and in the highly competitive court culture, the artists' celebrations of themselves in self-images were part of their jostling for increased social recognition and position. For Amon Tobin his presence in the composition adds a temporary dimension, a live dimension: he is interested in the reaction, and he can see that reaction during his performances. This is a possibility that contemporary artists can investigate only thanks to technology.
And more, he is not only using technology in his creative process, but also transforming his installation into a show, like theater and music, breaking the forth wall, and interacting with his public. In a way he is using new technology to present his own point of view on music as well. Music is traditionally played with instruments, it can be live, or recorded; music can be played as a jam session with no script or a like classical concert with very strict rules. What Amon Tobin presents is his personal vision on music, made with samplers and loops, no real instruments are involved, but virtual sounds create his original show. If you don't think the sampler can be a musical instrument, you haven't been listening to the music of Amon Tobin.