Araldica

Studio Dumbar2023ProjectInterview

23 Sept

Project

Araldica

A sound-reactive motion system built around heraldry, designed to scale across formats and stay in tune with the music, or even create it.

Turin-based creative studio illo has transformed an internal experiment in heraldry into a generative motion system where sound creates visuals and visuals can create sound.

Published
Sept 2026

Agency
illo

The project began in January 2026, when the studio set itself a collective brief to explore heraldry.

With no prescribed style or process, the team used the centuries-old visual language as a playground for experimenting with new tools and techniques.

One exploration stood out: a sharp, graphic and rhythmic animation created entirely in Cavalry, which would later be shown on the projection mapping screen at OFFF Barcelona.

But what began as an experiment soon became something much bigger.

The illo team built a motion toolkit around the initial video, a single visual system born from heraldic colour and pattern, from deep greens and sharp yellows to checkered geometries, reshaped to move in time with sound.

From a playlist cover to a single track’s artwork, from an in-app visual player to full video mapping on a wall, everything scales from the same source, the palette and pattern language staying recognisably heraldic at every size and format.

Inside the toolkit, two generative tools push it further. One turns sound into image, the other reverses it entirely.

A track goes in, and its rhythm, genre and length shape a live animated visual, with a dedicated podcast mode where a coiling, serpent-like line shifts colour with every change of speaker.

The other reverses it entirely: working in TouchDesigner, we scan the original Araldica footage colour by colour, translating it into music through Ableton.