The French artist David Dessens, aka Sanch, developed individual visual stylistic elements with the aid of vvvv. vvvv is a patch-based software environment that allows creating quick prototypes for graphic or video-based installations. In addition, it lends itself to the generation and manipulation of live visuals in connection with sounds.

In 2006, Sanch, the chief experimenter of the vvvv developer group meso, programmed a generative 3-D depiction of the superformula by Johan Gielis, a mathematic formulation with which the geometric transformations of plant shapes can be calculated.^[1] Johan Gielis, a biologist and botanist, discovered that certain shapes of plant are related and can be derived from each other. Based on this discovery, Dessens developed a three-dimensional translation of the superformula. Applying the so-called SuperFormula 3D, he generated complex three-dimensional objects that respond to fed-in music and set themselves in motion.

Dessen’s live visuals present numerous graphic objects, including circles that slowly transform into rectangles while rotating around a center. The speeds of the movements change. Striking and typical for Sanch are the colors of his visuals: combinations of earthy hues and loud dabs of color dominate before a background that seems to vault outward like a ball.

Together with a special calculation for complex shading, the generated objects seen even more plastic and full of detail. All of David Dessen’s developments can be viewed in vvvv’s forums and are available for downloading. Which also means that countless visualists can access these tools, and that their visual results (accordingly) only differ slightly from one another.