nD::StudioLab presents A Visual Music Exquisite Corpse

A Visual Music Exquisite Corpse features a chain of live feeds, one influencing the other, and looping in on itself.

Friday, March 31, 2023
5:30 PM
Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts Atrium
FREE

This project started as an online experiment during the pandemic as a way to build community within the lab. Lab members would live code and share audio-visual signals with each other using tools such as Zoom, Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/), and Discord (https://discord.com/). Unusual network topologies were created using these tools providing a foundation for exploration of live coded audio- visual media and real-time interactions. Since the relaxing of restrictions related to the pandemic focus has been on the translation of the project from a purely online performance modality, to one that is physical (and/or hybrid) in order to celebrate the liveness in our work and its ability to create community and connection with our audience and each other.

Motivation for the continued development of this work stems from a desire to explore the concept of ecosystem living, an approach to living that is collaborative with the environment. Ecosystem living strives to nurture the environment as much, or even more, than it takes nourishment from the world. Through this project will explore ecosystem living through:

1) The real-time manipulation of audio-visual content will be processed using live coding. Live coding is a practice in computational art where an artist writes code in real-time to improvisationally create audio and/or visual content that is presented to a live audience.

2) Using audio cables and video cables we will create networks of signals whereby one performer can pass their outputs to another performer that uses the incoming signal as a source for their own content. For example, by arranging the ensemble so that the signals are passed in a loop we can create an eight-node feedback system that has no beginning or end.

3) As part of this exploration, we will inject into the performance environment signals from the human body (e.g. heart (ECG) and brain signals (EEG)), climate and environmental data (e.g. weather, pollution), and non-human (e.g. biosignals from plants, bacteria, and other lifeforms).

4) Audience members will be invited to move around, lay down, sit, and congregate freely. Through the introduction of interactive devices and sensing systems, audience members will also be invited to participate in the work and have greater agency in the activity that is unfolding.

the nD::StudioLab is:
Eyal Assaf, Ilze [Kavi] Briede, Kwame Kyei-Boateng, Jacob Cram, Kimberly Davis, Filiz Eryilmaz, Francesc Morales, Marcus Gordon, Grace Grothaus, Hrysovalanti Maheras, Aftab Mirzaei, Nava Waxman and Mark-David Hosale