ALTERATION 109 is a generative audiovisual work created in collaboration with the Portuguese experimental music project @c (Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela) and drummer João Pais Filipe.
The video begins as a monochrome study of descriptive geometry. Initially, rectangular forms expand and contract while anchored to a fixed point; through the accumulation of visual traces, these fluctuating shapes construct a complex, layered image. Throughout the work, parameters such as the scale and rotation of the geometric elements react directly to the audio input. When the soundtrack introduces analogue percussion alongside the electronic textures, the visual system responds by injecting hues of orange and red into the composition before returning to stillness.
The work is distributed by Sixpackfilm and has been screened at international festivals including the Melbourne International Animation Festival and the Cube Art Project.
ALTERATION 109 (2015), generative audiovisual work. Excerpt from the full 6’33” original.
Selected generative outputs.
The Concept
Descriptive geometry for alien architecture: in her video ALTERATION 109, the software and net artist LIA carries out the metastasis of graphic objects; to begin with, in silvery black-and-white. In doing so, a highly-defined play of flat black, white, and gray forms shifting in and over another takes shape; a complex dance of fault lines, grids, peaks, and edges. The stuff quivers and pulsates, as though a mechanical heart were thumping within it enabling all of the mutations: the virtual design of this minimal universe is fundamentally unstable; reverting, transforming, altering, rebuilding is its basic program.
In gentle flip-flop effects and turning movements, the happenings nearly imperceptibly crossfade from the vertical to the horizontal; the illusion of spatial depth arises, the suggestion of proximity and distance, of focused and blurred zones. The nervous sounds from the computer conjure up a type of incomprehensible drama, a suspense that remains abstract: the sound design of LIA´s collaborators @C seems to comment on the visual course of events in a strictly coded language, to accompany it with the whispers of the hard drive and circuitry. First in the final third, as analogue percussion seeps into the soundtrack, discrete colors join in – blazing hues of orange, which soon play into blood red. In the finale, the colors are abruptly withdrawn again, movement dies down; the image gives birth to a synthetic sky in which a few ominous stars shine: News from a distant planetary system.
Text by Stefan Grissemann (Sixpackfilm)
Project Details
Year Created: 2015
Medium: Generative Audiovisual Work / Single-Channel Video
Duration: 6’33”
Format: 1920 x 1080
Creative Collaboration
Sound: @c (Miguel Carvalhais & Pedro Tudela)
Drums: João Pais Filipe
Distribution & Screenings
Distributed by: Sixpackfilm
Cube Art Project, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA (‘Public Screening’, July 21 – August 31, 2017)
Marienbad Film Festival, Velká Hleďsebe, Czechia (‘Focus Austria/sixpackfilm’, August 29 – September 2, 2017)
MIAF – Melbourne International Animation Festival, Melbourne, Australia (‘Film Screening’, June 21 – 28, 2016)
Tricky Women Festival, Vienna, Austria (‘Film Screening’, March 2 – 6, 2016)
PannOpticum, Neusiedl/See, Austria (‘Filmbrunch’, July 3, 2016)
