'Opening Ceremony'
June 10th
Artwork / FORMS (it’s a)Live
- Abstract: Santi Vilanova, artist of the Playmodes collective, presents a new performance mutation of FORMS. This new iteration of the project -whose “Screen Ensemble” version is part of the Beep collection of Electronic Art and of the exhibition that can be seen at the Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau- explores the compositional possibilities of visual music through generative graphic algorithms and image sonification.
On this occasion, the artist has developed a live controllable audiovisual system, which generates infinite variations of sonicated spectrograms, and which operates halfway between the sound machine and the live musical instrument.
A series of generative graphic algorithms produce spectrally coherent images, based on a set of randomness and probabilistic parameters controlled in real time by the artist. These sonograms are sonificated to generate soundscapes that may or may not incorporate elements of “classical” harmony and rhythmic periodicity.
The real-time sonification process analyzes a column of the image -the header- and links the brightness of each pixel to the amplitude of a sine wave bank. This is the reverse process of sound spectrums representation: instead of visualizing existing sound recordings, a visual representation is created first and then transformed into sound by additive synthesis.
In short, the engine becomes a digital instrument for sound and visual creation that can refer both to the more conservative schemes of music inherited from Romanticism and to the atonality / microtonality of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as opening a new audiovisual creation field that unifies sound and image in a single common code.
- Biography: Playmodes is an audiovisual research studio. A hybrid team of engineers, musicians and designers who work with home-made digital technologies, breathing life into generative light and sound instruments.
Their deep interest in the relationships between visual and auditory phenomena, as well as their skills in music composition, leads Playmodes to create projects where sound and image are treated as a single matter. In most of their projects -from immersive installations to instrumental performances- the same streams of data generate both audio and visuals through custom tools, driving the audience into strong synaesthetic perceptions.
Passionate about art, design, maths, physics, code, cymatics and nature, they share all these passions in lectures and workshops at universities, schools or institutions. Being part of a global network of creative coders and artists, they collaborate with people from around the world to deliver high quality and innovative projects in the cultural spectrum.
In recent years Playmodes has developed projects for international art festivals (Barcelona, Houston, Prague, Lyon, Las Vegas, Orlando, Karlsruhe), for cultural and commercial projects (light design for the Copenhagen Opera, Installation for Facebook at Rio Olympics) or as guest speakers at international design conferences (FITC Amsterdam, IALD Albuquerque, OFFF Barcelona)
Venue
- Edifici Novíssim
Plaça de Sant Miquel, 2, Barcelona
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