Digital-Node

Artistic practices around programming code are becoming more common in the Fine Arts context. These techniques allow the development of new languages that implement traditional experiences and bring new multidisciplinary disruptive codes to the artistic context. It is worth highlighting the use of visual programming code as a language more accessible to people outside the computer field. Software such as VVVV, a multipurpose toolkit (VVVV), has been developed, bearing in mind the creative possibilities this can bring to artists without computer engineers. In this sense, the figure of the artist programmer is established, and new innovative trends are opened in this sense, such as live Coding, for example.

Under this conceptual framework, this project, Color_Test_Pattern_00, stands as the first piece of the Color_Test_Pattern series initiated for this call of MuVi6. Its development is framed within the artistic trend of creative coding and the use of technology for artistic and interdisciplinary purposes. Using visual programming language with the VVVV software, algorithms have been generated to reorganise the video material used for this work. This process has been carried out by programming a generative patch that seeks an abstract aesthetic in which symmetrical geometry and the use of colour prevail. For this, an algorithm has been used that allows the fragmentation of both the image and the time of the visual material. The plastic material with which this audiovisual composition has been elaborated consists of audio and video field recordings

Ableton Live has been used to work with sound. This is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software with great creative power for sound design. Sound samples taken with a ZOOM H1 recorder have been used, to which a granular synthesis and some filters have been applied to achieve the density, colour and sound textures sought for the development of this work. The rest of the sounds have been generated using subtractive synthesis processes within the same software. For this purpose, different native synthesisers of the programme have been manipulated, as in the case of the Analog synthesiser.

As for the video, we have proceeded similarly; that is to say, we have edited the samples until we reached the cuts required for this piece. At this point, the open-source software Kdenlive has been chosen for initial editing and exporting in the format needed for this project. Once the selected video samples had been obtained, we developed the generative code used to visualise the fragments. As already mentioned, the VVVV application was used. This is a visual programming language designed for artists in which the programming is developed through nodes that can be interconnected using wires.

The programmed patch consists of a generative algorithm made up of two parts. On the one hand, a video player has been configured called Video-Glitch. This node, Video-Glitch, is affected by an audio analyser programmed to interact through specific frequencies of the analysed sound. In this way, a generative audio-reactive process has been created. The sound creates unexpected behaviours in the playback of the videos, affecting both the time and the playback, thus obtaining the first piece of the Color_Test_Pattern series.

This work is based on a reflection on the union of two concepts, play and ritual, understanding them as elements that generate "small dramas" that combine in their logic fundamental issues such as the interpretation of the world, spiritual ideals, social codes, control over bodies or the collective imaginary.

In the same way, they share in their development the particularity of creating their own space and time. In the game and the rite, they maintain established rules, customs, and symbolic frameworks. At the same time, they operate in the presence of areas of indeterminacy or ambiguity, uncertainty, and manipulation from a state of ecstasy. Order is never fully imposed, nor could it be. Cultural, contractual, and technical imperatives always leave gaps, require adaptations and interpretations to apply to situations, and are full of ambiguities, inconsistencies and often contradictions.

This project is approached by attending to digital aesthetics of remixing with which a historical-cultural recreation is presented based on specific socio-cultural contexts that, it is argued with this work, share the principles of Play, Ritual and Ecstasy.

The main objective is to construct a cultural relation of traditional actions to develop an artistic discourse that shows their counter-history. The conceptual line of this proposal is configured around traditional performance rituals focused on pointing out orthodox cultural imperatives in a (de)narrative way. The technical execution of this proposal proposes a remix of video material recovered both from archive videos downloaded from the Internet and from our resources with which the conceptual bases of this (de)narration will be established. For the design of the good part of this work, we have worked on the one hand with the material of the videos themselves and on the other hand with digital synthesisers.

Using digital tools and creative coding practices, the visual material is remixed through previously programmed audio-reactive behaviours. The order is mainly based on analysing specific sound frequencies and applying them to different patterns that affect the video playback. I have called this technique creative (dis)narration because of the randomness implicit in the developed technique.

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[DIYSIK] addresses audiovisual production through open source. The project is developed during an artistic creation scholarship at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Málaga (2014).

The piece is composed of two interfaces built with Arduino and trust images. These are controlled by the programs vvvv and Pure Data.

This piece shows the importance of programming code in audiovisual production.

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Project within the framework of the Bernardo de Gálvez scholarship granted by the University of Málaga.

Produced in collaboration with Professor Thomas Asmuth, a transdisciplinary artist and Associate Professor of the Faculty of Art and Design of the University of West Florida.