Through My Fault
Rhythm, lights and shadows; micro-details, grains and noises; overlapped layers and textures in a simulated space.
“Por Mi Culpa” (Spanish for “mea culpa”, a Latin phrase translated as “through my fault”) rest beneath an oscillation between abstract images and the documentation of a body’s interaction with the audiovisual technology that produces and records the process of manufacture itself. The image is composed only of video footage and lighting effects generated by computer controlled lamps. The soundtrack is a live performance with no further editing.
This is a black and white digital HD audiovisual piece (06:13, 1920 x 1080, 30fps), created exclusively with free licensed software: Kdenlive (Jason Wood, 2002) for images and Pure Data (Miller Puckette, 1996) for music. The aesthetics of the video was inspired by classic experimental cinema of the early 20th century by artists such as Man Ray ( Le retour à la raison, 1923) and Fernand Léger (Ballet mécanique, 1924), and also influenced by modern austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky (Motion Picture, 1984; Manufraktur, 1985). At the same time the soundtrack is related to some Tscherkassky pieces but mainly motivated by granular works by Iannis Xenakis. The video shows the performance of the musical soundtrack, altered by video montage/editing tools and overlaid blinding light flashes. For this reason the temporal structure or “the narrative” of the video is given by the evolution of the prior musical score. The main goal of the creation process was to explore the intersection between predefined automated processes and embodied real-time control. So an ad hoc software was developed to control a real time granular synthesis engine and some synchronous light devices via DMX. Both features (sound and light) are commanded by a pressure-sensitive MIDI grid pad. At the same time, in order to enrich the liveness of this dialogue (automatic computer vs performer’s real-time) the music’s non-traditional score uses freehand drawn graphics based on John Cage’s ideas of indeterminacy (see Cage, J. 1961, Indeterminacy).
17 Days Video Series 