(2013/2016)
Immersive audiovisual performance
Audiovisualisation of Mandelbox fractal
Construction in Kneading is a live generative audiovisual work. It explores a virtual life form based on the Mandelbox, an n-dimensional fractal inspired by the Mandelbrot set. Its recursion formula resembles the actions of kneading dough in bread making, similar to the baker’s map. It is a speculative inquiry into the abstract inner-workings of an algorithmic entity whose behaviour is presented in the sensory world through a live “audiovisualisation”, generating both sound and moving image in real-time without either following the other as in most VJ practice and sound visualisations. Furthermore, no pre-recorded audio samples, conventional synthesis methods, pre-rendered movies or textures are used.
A performance consists of an improvised duet/duel between a human and a machine, where the performer attempts to understand and control the emergent system. What is seen can also be heard and vice versa, serving a didactic purpose in allowing the processes behind the work to be perceived. However, many of the changes occurring in a performance can be triggered by either the human performer or the generative system. Thus it is often difficult to determine which of the two is responsible for each “decision”. An increasing number of dimensions of the system are revealed as the work progresses through its three parts, beginning with a line (1D), followed by a slice (2D), and ending with a volumetric space (3D).
Photo documentation from 4-channel video / quadraphonic audio version, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju. Screen captures from single-channel video version. Video documentation from single-channel video version, WRO, Wroclaw and Live Cinema Festival, Rome.