Trippy Video Shows You What a Bird Song ‘Looks Like’ Using Photos and 3D Software

It starts with photos. A lot of photos. Photos of birds, bugs, plants and any other nature-y things that Australian artist Andy Thomas can get his hands on. And once he’s got those, he somehow manages to turn them into a birdsong you can ‘see.’

The final product of his work — which he was commissioned to create by Europeana Creative — is a mesmerizing 3D animation that shows pieces of these photographs bursting out from a point in the center of the frame in response to audio recordings of the forest.

He calls them “Audio Life Forms,” and there’s a lot of 3D software involved in turning these photos of nature into a visual representation of the sounds of nature, but you can’t argue with the final product. It might not be what you imagined (or experienced on that last acid trip) but for Thomas, this is what a bird song actually looks like.

(via Fast Company)