All work

No. 003

Shanti Shanti Shanti

Maa Kali's third eye opens on the beat: a woodcut-style eye ritual for BABYMETAL

Track
BABYMETAL “Shanti Shanti Shanti”
Date
Format
9:16 · 1080×1920 · 27 s
Watch with sound on Instagram (opens in a new tab)

Concept

A giant third eye snaps open on the first hit of the final chorus. The camera pulls back and it becomes the third eye of Maa Kali, the fierce protective mother goddess, standing in front of a wall of watching eyes. Everything is drawn in one woodcut and block-print language: ink black, blood red, bone white and ochre gold.

The piece follows the whole final chorus of BABYMETAL’s “Shanti Shanti Shanti” (2019), 27 seconds from 2:36. “Shanti” is Sanskrit for peace. In the first pass of the chorus a golden sunburst ticks behind her head and the wall blinks in waves; in the second pass a wheel of eyes turns behind her, one notch per beat. At the end every eye closes, the camera pushes back into the closed third eye, and the loop starts again on the same hit.

How it’s made

Network / TouchDesigner

Matching woodcut-style stills, animated beat by beat in TouchDesigner with one GLSL compositor.

  1. Layers. Eight stills share one 9:16 frame: the goddess with her eyes open, closed and glowing, a wall of 41 eyes open and closed, the third eye in close-up open and closed, and a mandala of eyes. The closed and glowing versions were aligned to the open ones and only the eyes were transplanted, so the layers match pixel for pixel.
  2. Eyelids. Every eye of the wall was located automatically, so each one blinks on its own. A lid comes down from the top with a soft edge and an eased start and stop. Blink waves run outwards from the goddess on the snare; at the end the wall closes from the edges inwards.
  3. Camera. One zoom about the third eye joins the close-up and the full figure: the close-up still is a redrawn detail of the same eye, scaled 14.2× so the two line up. The pull-back, a punch on every beat and the final push-in are one continuous move.
  4. Sync. A beat grid fitted to the kick drum (131.9 BPM, 60 beats) plus onset envelopes from the audio drive every parameter frame by frame: the sunburst snaps a step on every 16th note, red ghosts of her silhouette flash on the snare, the frame flashes red on each bar, pupils dilate on the kick, and the mandala’s outer ring turns 1/16 per beat while the inner ring turns back on the snare.
  5. Output. Rendered offline frame by frame from TouchDesigner, encoded with FFmpeg; on this site it plays as a silent 720×1280 loop.

Tools

  • TouchDesigner
  • GLSL
  • Python
  • FFmpeg

Credits

SH01 · 003
  • Music BABYMETAL, “Shanti Shanti Shanti” (from METAL GALAXY, 2019). Excerpt 2:36–3:03. All rights to the track belong to the artist and rights holders. Fan visual, not affiliated with the band.
  • Visuals Oleg Sharshakov / SH01. Animated in TouchDesigner with GLSL, 11 October 2026.
  • Sound This site shows a silent loop. The version with sound is on Instagram: watch the Reel on @sh01.io.