MELANIE-LookingOutwards-2

Garden Of Eden // Rule 110 by Peter Curet

This is a case where title greatly affects how I interpret the visuals; I could see the garden, specifically the Garden of Eden, and kept projecting what I know of the story of Garden of Eden onto the visuals. The result is fascinating; these abstract shapes become narrative. It’s obvious in the beginning because the shapes form a garden of sorts, but as time goes on, the shapes become more and more abstract, and I continued to connect the concept of Eden to the shapes. The ending is worth watching, only because there were so many complex generative shapes before and then suddenly, it all gets quiet…

Midimals by Georg Reil

Creation of sound loops is pretty common, but the way Georg Reil used the visual interface to make it seem magical is really cool to me. I’m a sucker for the idea of generating visuals with just my hands, physically touching the materialized sound. It’s also unique to find beautiful visualization of such interface in the first place, and the freedom to create shapes that correspond to the loops is inspiring. I guess I really like technology disguised as magic. I just wish there was a better documentation of it.

unnamed soundsculpture by Daniel Franke and Cedric Kiefer

This was the first thing that popped up after I googled “sound sculpture,” so I presume it’s pretty famous? And rightly so. Although they do not mention it in the process, the documentation video shows that they used Processing, presumably for collecting and manipulating the movement data from Kinect. At first I wasn’t impressed, but as they started introducing dynamic camera angles and blackness, I became mesmerized by how fantastical it looked despite being a digital form. It almost looked like a weeping goddess, if I’m allowed to be that dramatic… I’ve always appreciated dancers and the artful contortions of the human body, but this makes me appreciate the sense of unreality dance can portray through technology. The constant afterimages gave the impression that there were often multiple people dancing together, and the imagery of gravity is powerful by the end of the piece. And it’s beautiful, especially when the dancer stops moving and the particles become static and shadowed. I just have one complaint: I wish it were more dynamic at some points, to keep the audience engaged and tickled. At times it suffers from the trap dance performances fall into: letting their audience go. Though, I wonder if that’s the fault of the dancer and not the algorithm?