Tessellation

This video is Geometry of a Scene by Tony Zhou from every frame a painting. In short, it highlights a facet of cinematography that a scene should have aesthetic geometric structure as a part of the visual storytelling. It captures the viewer just by it's structure and is thus far more engaging and rewarding. It made me think of where else one can introduce this artistic structure for similar effect.

An obvious extension is music. Sure it might not explicitly be a visual effect (unless you're synesthetic,) but it creates a similar feeling. For example, take 'The Real Folk Blues' by yoko Kanno. I use this example because if you watched the video above, you can easily correlate between the triangles used there to the triangles used in this music:

Notice that even though it deviates from this geometric structure only when it needs to highlight the rising element a couple times, you always have a tandem of three elements either moving forward together or ramping together. It's mind boggling fantastic how these artists have the inherent sensibility to come up with such a complicated balance.

However, art is not the only medium one can apply this aspect to. Think about an academic medium like teaching a complicated subject in a classroom. Can we still create a structure of this sort that engages the students' attention? Of course great professors tend to do this. What is the triangle (for example) that they use? The first element is the writing on the board. The second element is what they speak and their gestures. The third element might either be a model or demonstration, or it might be an analogy if you don't have a physical model available. They'll involve physical movement to lay emphasis on specific parts of this triangle when needed.

Tony Zhou talks about how to structure a video essay in a different video of his:

I believe a similar principle applies here.You have two or more elements in concert, but on a temporal dimension instead of spatial. Think of applying this concept to the art of great storytelling through text; you might even say good academic papers will follow this structure. You structure the story in parallel threads where you explore each thread till its peak interest is reached then you cut to the other thread(s). As you go forward, you start tying up these threads and have a big reveal near the end. It's the same principle of geometric hook that gives the reader more margin for interaction with your work.

This is something that I'm prioritizing as my must-inculcate-in-self from this point on. It's all about magic and deception, but in an honest manner :)