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Fragment

An ongoing audiovisual series in which unstable forms gather, separate and reorganize through motion, sound and spatial transformation.

2025–2026 · Ongoing real-time audiovisual series · Max/MSP Jitter

Fragment I · 2025 · Video Documentation Open on YouTube ↗

Fragment is an ongoing real-time audiovisual series developed in Max/MSP Jitter. Beginning with a custom particle engine, the series follows how visual form gathers, loosens and reorganizes through continuous motion. Each fragment develops a different spatial condition while remaining inside the same field of instability, movement and temporary structure.

Process Sketches

Early sketches for Fragment I were used to think through the behavior of the particle field before the first audiovisual form was settled. These images trace a gradual movement from volume and frame to line, field and fragment.

They do not function as storyboards. They are visual thoughts — small studies of enclosure, axis, density, dispersion and the temporary coherence of a shape.

Early Fragment process sketch showing a luminous cube-like particle frame on a black background — Volume as a temporary enclosure: a field gathers into a soft-edged cubic frame.

Early Fragment process sketch showing layered linear frames and spatial structure — Line and structure: spatial depth emerges from repeated linear traces and unstable architectural frames.

Early Fragment process sketch showing four bright particle nodes and a cross-like field — Field and attraction: points of intensity organize the surrounding particle space into a cross-like force field.

Early Fragment process sketch showing a diagonal cluster of particle fragments and dispersed motion — Dispersion and fracture: a figure begins to dissolve into scattered fragments while still retaining directional force.

Form as a Temporary State

The visual field begins with particles and motion. What becomes visible is a structure held together for a brief moment.

As the particle field shifts, contours gather and drift away again. Deformation is part of the life of the form, and each transition becomes one of the ways the work thinks through visibility.

Fragment II · 2026

A More Skeletal Spatial Field

The second fragment moves toward a more skeletal spatial field. Wireframe forms accumulate, separate and reconnect across depth, producing structures that remain visibly incomplete and unstable.

Density shifts between clustered masses and sparse spatial relations, extending Fragment from particle motion toward a more architectural condition.

Fragment II · 2026 · Video Documentation Open on YouTube ↗

Form appears as a temporary trace of forces that cannot themselves be seen.

From Motion to Structure

Fragment is concerned with how something internal becomes legible as structure. Motion, density, attraction and dispersion gradually give the particle field a visible organization.

The resulting shapes remain open and mutable. A form can gather, stretch, fragment and reorganize without settling into a final image, allowing the work to stay inside transformation instead of presenting a single resolved object.

Sound as Energy and Rhythm

The sound draws on the weight, pulse and abrupt changes of energy associated with dubstep, while developing those impulses through computer-music processes.

Sound and image move together inside one real-time field. Rhythmic pressure, contrast and changing density intensify the sense that both sonic and visual form are always in motion.

Real-Time Audiovisual System

The work was created entirely in Max/MSP Jitter, with sound and visual programming by Liu Hao. The system combines a custom particle engine with live image generation and sound processes, allowing the piece to unfold as one continuous audiovisual environment.

Visual systemCustom real-time particle engine
Visual processParticle motion · deformation · fragmentation · continuous transformation
SoundReal-time computer music informed by the energy and rhythm of dubstep
EnvironmentMax/MSP · Jitter
Current partsFragment I · 2025 · Fragment II · 2026

Max/MSP Jitter patch overview used during the making of Fragment — A process view from the Max/MSP Jitter patch: one of the early working sketches used to think through particle position, velocity, drawing modes and field behavior. It is included here as documentation, without turning the page into full technical breakdown.

Work Archive

Title: Fragment
Period: 2025–2026
Artist: Liu Hao / 刘昊
Form: Ongoing real-time audiovisual series
Sound & visual programming: Liu Hao
Current parts: Fragment I · Fragment II
Software: Max/MSP · Jitter
Visual system: Custom real-time particle engine
Process material: Creation-period sketches and Max/MSP Jitter working view
Documentation: Fragment I ↗ · Fragment II ↗