Audio-Visual Performancesالعروض السمعية والبصرية

Algorave – a word coined to give an identity to events that have been pushed by experimental electronic musicians/artists all over the world. The idea – to use open source software development platforms as an instrument/paintbrush and performing live in front of a diverse, inclusive and accepting audience. Balancing the fine line between technical proficiency and showmanship, livecoders are both in their heads to understand the mathematics and logic of the specific platform they are playing through as well as be outside to connect with the environment and all the havoc that their code is causing. The centre of attention is always the pages and pages of source code that is projected on the large screens all around the performers. With the performer like a conductor of an orchestra of machines, with gesticulations in the form of programming code and algorithms. Khoparzi will perform an improvised audio and visual set using a customised build of the functional programming language Haskell with a live coding library called TidalCycles and Hydra, a JavaScript based platform for visual synthesis. Abhinay’s sound is inspired by an eclectic mix of IDM and experimental electronic music of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Using a combination of sampling and granular synthesis techniques, he makes a soundscape ranging from deep meditative ambient explorations to broken beats and cutting rhythms that sound like a post apocalyptic party organised by robots after they have taken over humanity for slave labour.

Ravel Landscapes fuses generative image, created by visual artists Quayola & Sinigaglia with the classical pianist Vanessa Wagner’s interpretations of Ravel’s Pavane, Les Vales Nobles et Sentimentales, Gaspard de la Nuit and Ma Mere L’Oye. By application of custom software, the polyphonic sound of the piano is analysed and transformed into complex visual compositions. Quayola & Sinigaglia are interested in addressing the same oniric dimension Ravel intended with Gaspard de la Nuit, where due to technical challenges and profound musical structure, the 3rd section, Scarbo is considered one of the most difficult solo piano pieces ever written. The visuals encompass concepts alluding to a landscape of the psyche, where tangible dimensions exist as a reverie and linger in waking realities. A journey between polarities unfolds, conscious and unconscious, real and unreal, intuitive and orchestrated realities develop synchronously through sound and image as dynamic sequential scores.

The aesthetics of man-made objects in space, their appearance and especially their orbits are transformed into a minimal audiovisual performance, showing the poetic dance satellites and their trash perform while revolving around us. Seemingly chaotic paths mutate to amazing patterns of an almost organic nature—all of it due to pure physical necessity. When we started working with global satellite data, their information was based on a website maintained by the US Air Force. Yet after some time, based on information from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we discovered that some objects were missing. Fortunately the data on classified satellites is generated by enthusiastic amateur astronomers observing the night skies Merging the two sources, balancing between artistic autonomy and the necessary scientific rigorousness, the performance is an aesthetic and intuitive live experiment, revealing this new layer of human infrastructure.