Mandala/kaleidoscope animation

There are a lot of elements in that sample video. I would start a project like that with the music and then start building simple elements that I could stack up. You can do a lot with a single shape layer, a couple of repeaters, and 8 keyframes. This would be just one element. I'm showing you everything that was done to this shape layer. You can reproduce it if you copy these values and follow this workflow:

• Create a new comp that is exactly 4 seconds long
• Add a small ellipse anywhere on the screen
• Press 'uu' to reveal the properties of the Shape layer
• Under Contents Rename Ellipse 10mm dots (or anything you like)
• spin down all the properties of Contents/Ellipse 1 and set
  • Size to 10, 10 
  • Position to 80, 0
  • Delete the stroke you don't need it
  • Set keyframes for color at 0, 1, 2, and 4 seconds - your choice of color
  • Under Transform 10mm dots add this expression to Rotation time * 180
  • Add a Repeater to 10mm dots
    • Set copies to 10
    • Set keyframes for copies as follows 0 seconds - 10 copies, 1 second - 1 copy, 2 seconds - 10 copies
    • Set Transform Repeater 1 position to 25, 0
  • Add a second Repeater to 10mm dots
    • Set Copies to 12
    • Set Rotation to 30º

You'll end up with this:

This layer can now be pre-composed and looped and added to the main comp so that the dots will spin around as long as you need them to. I know it doesn't look like any part of the sample video but it is original and what I came up with while experimenting for about 5 minutes.

Repeat the procedure about a hundred times and combine a bunch of these comps to generate your visualization. I am guessing the creator of the sample video spent somewhere between fifty and one hundred hours creating the sample video. It would be very helpful if we knew how much time you have to spend on this project. You can get pretty fancy by just duplicating ideas like this one and changing the shape. The dots could have been lines or triangles. You could animate anything you like. I didn't see anything at all in that sample video that could not have been produced with a single shape on a shape layer, a few keyframes, and some repeaters. You just have to put each idea on a new layer and start stacking them up.

If your audiovisual project is a representation of some kind of data you can use that data to drive things like rotation, position, color, motion blur, the number of objects. You just have to make a plan. I've done hundreds of data visualizations and it is not really that difficult to do if you start with a piect of graph paper and a pencil and start sketching out ideas based on the data. 

Let us know if there is anything else we can help you with. 

Ouch! 🤣 very ambitious for a nooby 🤣 

Maybe take a look at this great video to get an understanding of what pre-comps are because it will be essential .... projects in AE are called 'compositions' (your layers and keyframes etc..) and 'pre-compositions' are kind of compositions within compositions which I would say will be essential for mandala type stuff 😮🤔 🤔)

But this vid is a great overview of essential functions

https://youtu.be/9Fv3XVdTOXM