Cinematic music occupies a crowded visual landscape within the production music industry, with many releases relying on familiar imagery and established conventions. The challenge was to create a visual language the music could genuinely claim as its own. That idea became the foundation of NOVA’s catalogue identity, evolving across more than 90 commissioned releases.

The album track Transformations became the starting point for the artwork. Its slow-burn build, shifting density and controlled release suggested a visual system in a constant state of evolution. I developed a particle simulation using the original audio as its primary input, allowing particle emission, movement and lifespan to respond directly to the music.

Every particle exists as an individual event within a larger structure. As new particles emerge, others decay, creating a continuous cycle of accumulation and renewal that reflects the behaviour of the music. The finished artwork captures a single moment within that process, rendered as the published album cover.

The simulation is built on harmonic subdivision. These proportional relationships govern particle lifespan, travel distance and emission, giving the complexity of the system an underlying order. The structural diagrams document those relationships and show how they influence its behaviour.

The animated screen capture shows the complete system in motion. Particles stream towards the viewer, leaving brief trails before disappearing, while the live particle count rises and falls as particles are emitted and expire. It makes the connection between the music, the system and the finished artwork visible in real time.