Industrial Landscapes of the Future-Past
Isogram
Mark Hancock recently wrote of review of my audio-visual performance projects and explored research I’ve documented at my blog Dataisnature over the last 8 years in a part interview, part article at Furtherfield: Industrial Landscapes of the Future/Past: DataisNature and the work of Paul Prudence
‘The pattern recognition part of the brain draws analogies between spatio-temporal systems found in nature and ones found in computational domains – they share similar patterns. I began to think of the forms found in natural spaces more and more in terms of the aeolian protocols, metamorphic algorithms and hydrodynamic computations that created them.’
‘The blogging process offers a chance to gather information and allow some of the artist’s own influences and present interests to manifest themselves into a rough-hewn structure. Blogging facilitates a medium for an archaeology of aesthetics, technology and conceptuality. All this fragmented information is gathered then reconstituted, and fed back into the artistic practice.’
You can read the article HERE
Plums A-V Festival, Moscow: Parhelia
Parhelia [Finale]
In late May 2012 I gave a performance of my visual music piece Parhelia at Plums A-V Festival in Moscow. As with all my performances preparation for a new show includes adding new material and sections to the existing structure of a piece. One of the benefits of working with generative systems is the relative ease of adding new content and reconfiguring existing parameters to create new combinatorial sequences. A new collection of sounds were harvested from an existing bank of personal field-recordings taken from mechanical devices and used to choreograph kinetic geometric transformations.
Parhelia at Plums Festival – Paul Prudence
Parhelia at Plums Festival – Paul Prudence
Parhelia at Plums Festival – Paul Prudence
Parhelia at Plums Festival – Paul Prudence
Parhelia at Plums Festival – Paul Prudence
A Flickr set of images of the festival performances can be found HERE. A set documenting stills of the piece can be found HERE. Another video of Parhelia can be found HERE.
After the show I spent a few days exploring the Moscow by foot, using psychogeographic trajectories based on the locations of buildings such the Shukhov and Ostankino Towers and The Monument to The Conquerors of Space as well as other assorted modernist/constructivist buildings. A Flickr set documenting my explorations can be found HERE.
Thanks to Anya Intektra Ti and Kirill Markushin for the invitation to Moscow and to perform at the festival.
Lectures/Performances in Denver, Colorado
Lecture at the Emergent Digital Practices Department, Denver University
In early May 2012 I gave a lecture and workshop at the Emergent Digital Practices Department, University of Denver, alongside two live performances, one at the Cube (with Francisco Lopez) and another at the Gates Planetarium. The lecture included an overview of my artistic practice concentrating on generative visual music systems and multi-modal works I’ve made using VVVV.
Hydro-acoustic Study, the piece performed at the Cube, has been developed in collaboration with the sound artists Francisco Lopez. For the Gates Planetarium performance I brought along Rynth – a full-dome work originally developed for the Planetarium Artis and performed during the Sonic Acts Festival held in Amsterdam, 2010. A Flickr set of photos documenting my trip to Denver can be found HERE
Thanks to Trace Redell and Tim Weaver for the invitation to sunny Denver, and a great trip into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Störung: Sound & Visual Art [DVD+Book]
Störung: Sound & Visual Art [DVD+Book]
A DVD edit of my collaborative live-performance work Francisco Lopez is contained on the recently released Störung: Sound & Visual Art DVD [also including a book]. This particular 6 minute version of ‘Hydro-Organic Machine Study’ was constructed and edited specifically for DVD format and contains new elements not found in the live performance.
The full list of artists included on this release include: D-Fuse, dextro, AM [AEM], Sergio Subero, Sergio Brauer, Alan Courtis, Paul Prudence, Francisco López, Kim Cascone, XX+XY, Aleix Fernández, Asférico, Andy Guhl, Hugo Olim, Simon Whetham, elufo, Diego Alberti y Federico Monti.
A short promo clip of the DVD can be found HERE
Press Release:
Störung: Sound & Visual Art” is the ninth release of Störung, and has been published together with Cameo. This DVD+Book is available from 11th of April 2012 and contains eleven exclusive audiovisual works made by more than twenty artists from different parts of the world. It includes a book with synopses written by the artists, their biographies and selected photographs taken during the past six years of Störung.
The selection of pieces is a representative sample of various artistic tendencies that fall into the sound and image concept of Störung. The techniques employed in the pieces are very diverse and include both analogical and digital processes in their sound and visual elements. Apart from its documentary function as audiovisual file, this release is intended to inspire all people interested in art and its contemporary music tendencies.
LEV/Vittus [AV performance, Gijon, Spain]
I will perform a commissioned AV work in collaboration with the Spanish composer Ramón Prada, also know as Vittus, for LEV Festival [Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual ] on April 27th 2012 at the Teatro de la Laboral, Gijon, Spain. The work interweaves classical composition incorporating live piano and viola, with field recordings and abstract electronic tones/rhythms. For real-time video generation I used live sound analysis combined with time-line triggers – often shifting the connections between musical voices and abstract visual signifiers in the hope of creating non-predictable synchronies. These shifts are also triggered by rhythmic aspects of the composition.
Teatro de la Laboral [performance space for LEV/Vittus]
The sixth edition of LEV aims to present current work connecting visual arts and electronic music – in particular those using live cross-modal strategies to create synergetic relationships between sound and image.
Flickr Stills can be found HERE
Encountering Data | Songs of Milarepa
Songs of Milarepa I at Encountering Data, Stony Brook University
Songs of Milarepa I-IV at Encountering Data, Stony Brook University
The Encountering Data event held at Stony Brook University, New York, between January and February 2012 comprised of a set of lectures, performances and an exhibition of artworks.
‘The ability to perceive data in multiple formats – image, sound, touch – adds immeasurably to the possibilities of understanding and inspecting the massive sets of data that researchers in all disciplines are constantly accumulating. Thus, addressing the problem of data demands that conversations take place across a wide range of disciplines. Encountering Data showcases recent works in computer science, art, physics, music, mathematics, and intersections thereof.’
Songs of Milarepa II at Encountering Data, Stony Brook University
Songs of Milarepa III at Encountering Data, Stony Brook University
I contributed a set of prints to the show using data obtained from sound analysis and arrived at from the measurement of EEG readings. Rather than attempt to derive hard-edge scientific visualisations, these works explored the possibilities of datasets as material for the construction architectural forms and volumetric structures.
Here’s the text taken from the show:
Songs of Milarepa I-IV
Paul Prudence’s work moves in the opposite direction [from transforming images into sound] – generating image from sound, through the visualization of audio data. The Songs of Milarepa series are generated using parameters derived from real-time audio analysis [frequency and volume] of Eliane Radigue’s electroacoustic drone piece ‘Songs of Milarepa’. Frequency modulates an array of surface textures, while the volume parameters are used to construct a 3D mesh on which the textures are projected.
Songs of Milarepa IV at Encountering Data, Stony Brook University, New York
EEG Diptych, Encountering Data, Stony Brook University and EEG Pendant Device
While visually similar to the Songs of Milarepa, this diptych utilises real-time EEG [Electroencephalography] readings from the wireless EEG Pendant device. After Fourier Transform processing in BioExplorer [software] the data is sent to VVVV where Beta/Alpha states are visualised at textures on shapes informed by time-based averages which generate the shape [mesh].
A Flickr set of larger photographs of the prints can be found HERE.
Surface Tension | Synergetica Studiolab
Surface Tension | Synergetica Studiolab lecture slides
For the closing event of Surface Tension, an exhibition themed around water at Science Gallery in Dublin, I gave a lecture and then a performance of Hydro Acoustic Study. While much of my lecture concentrated on the aesthetic and technical considerations behind my piece, some of the time was also given up to exploring and discussing phenomenological aspects of the optical effects of light penetrating water – particularly during sonic transduction.
Other presentations were given by Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand (who invited me to be part of the night) on ‘Hydrosophy – from Electrolysis to Quantum Sensibility’ and Dr. Raoul Frese on ‘Photosynthaics: Bio Solar Cells’.
A Flickr set of photographs from Surface Tension – Synergetica Studiolab (including selected lecture slides) can be found HERE.
Artist Residency in Slovenia: Structure M.11
Structure-M.11, a real-time visual performance work, was initiated and completed during Guestroom Maribor – a one month artist residency organised by Pekarna Madalenska Mreže and MKC Maribor in November 2011.
Recordings were made of industrial processes, ventilation and water cooling systems, mechanical apparatus in the industrial areas of Maribor, Slovenia. I was also interested in exploring the quasi-musicality of discarded industrial equipment and broken machinery and the inherent percussive sounds they can generate.
Based on insinuations of a sound collage/composition, made with these field recordings, real-time visual material was generated denoting activations and operations disassociated from sonic origin – a parallel Universe for these nearly extinct sounds to reside once again.
Structure M.11
At the end of the Residency I gave a presentation of the process involved in making Structure M.11, including a sonic psychogeographic overview of the territory covered during the field-recording explorations. Photographs of the sites visited and final residency sketches for the piece can be found HERE.
MFRU Visual Music Workshops
Visual Music workshop using VVVV at MFRU’11, Maribor, Slovenia
Much of November 2011 was taken up by a set of performances and a visual music workshop in Maribor, Slovenia during the MFRU/Kiblix festivals.
As part of the Optofonica showcase I gave a performance of my collaborative piece Hydroacoustic Study with the sound artist Francisco Lopez. The work was updated and an entirely new section of audio and visual material was added specially for the show.
To compliment the performance I was also invited to give a visual music workshop using VVVV. Covering a wide range of topics such real-time sound analysis, beat-detection and OSC/MIDI control, students learned to create generative visual music systems from scratch with little prior knowledge of VVVV to perform a VJ set at the festival closing party.
Visual Music workshop lecture slides at MFRU’11, Maribor, Slovenia
Day 1 of the workshop included an introductory lecture on the history and philosophy of Visual Music from early Colour Organs to recent work made using computational methods. A selection of clips from classic works in the field were shown and discussed including Allegretto by Oskar Fischinger [1936], Synchromy by Norman Mclaren [1971], Light by Jordan Belson [1973] and Pixilation by Kenneth Knowlton & Lillian Schwartz [1971].
A Flickr set of the photographs of the festivals can be found HERE.
Parhelia – Revisted & Revised
In the last month I spent some time revising Parhelia a real-time visual-music piece originally made last year and performed at Electrovision, London. In the work sample based mechanical sounds are used to orchestrate a family of concentric forms in space. The scenes suggest the workings of a mechanism where geometric component parts interact with one an another triggering corresponding sounds (and vice-versa).
The patching schematic involved became quite large so it made sense to create a set of modular sub-patches running from the main control patch. Isolating specific tasks as modules allows them to be re-used and scaled accordingly for use in new work.
Parhelia VVVV Patch – Paul Prudence
The image above shows the main patch and 15 sub-patches that make up Parhelia layered together. A much larger high-resolution screen grab can be found HERE, in which you can see the specific organisation of nodes within Parhelia. I’m particularly interested in the aesthetics of patch schematics generated by the constraints of visual programming and how personal patching styles drive the structures in visual programming languages.
Parhelia has been featured at CreativeApplications.net.