Absolutely beautiful!

Portrait of the ghost drummer from odaibe on Vimeo.

Drummer's Gestures Beautifully Illustrated In "Portrait Of The Ghost Drummer"
by Joe Bernardi January 18, 2012

As most musicians will attest, enough practice will make playing your instrument second nature. Eventually, a skilled enough player will ignore each individual breath or arm movement, and instead focus on the performance itself.

In hopes of gaining some insight into the graphic and choreographic qualities of these movements, Poland-based graphic designer and artist Bartek Szlachcic pointed a motion-capturing camera towards himself while he played a drum solo. He then converted the trajectory of his arm movements into simple black lines set across a three-dimensional field, animating the arcs of each individual drum hit in real-time.
The result is reminiscent of Michal Levy’s excellent animation set to the tune of “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane; a perfectly abstract visual representation of what is usually a concrete, auditory experience.

Visual beauty aside, Szlachcic has created an interesting study of our semi-conscious movements, and how they can play off and build upon one another without us giving it so much as a second thought. Thinking about this sort of thing all the time seems like it would drive a person out of their mind, but as an exercise in self-awareness, and a meditation on the trancelike state that musical performance can induce, it’s pretty enlightening.

(found on Digg)