Polyphonic Loops
In this scene from Upgrade Soul, a digital comics collaboration between myself and writer/illustrator Ezra Claytan Daniels, we play with loops in a different way. Here, a hospitalized character receives a visitation that leads to panic, and the beeps of her EKG are used as a looping musical component. Since, as the sequence proceeds, we often have two panels on screen representing the beeps, we use that as an opportunity to create rhythmic interaction between the loops across panels.
In effect, the panels begin talking to each other in ways that don’t interfere with the functioning of the temporal map, but instead add an new layer of time to the story and to the music, and hopefully some tension as well.