Max/MSP
PER/FORMATIVE CITIES
- A Nest of Triptychal Performances -
Artist Saun Santipreecha
Co-producer and Max Engineer Luc Trahand
Curated by Camilla Boemio
Presented by Reisig & Taylor Contemporary
Exhibited at AOC F58 Galleria Bruno Lisi
(Rome, Italy)
Feb. 29 - Mar. 15, 2024
PER/FORMATIVE CITIES
- A Nest of Triptychal Performances -
Working with artist Saun Santipreecha on his Rome exhibit Per/formative Cities, to be engaging with the writings of Italo Calvino, I co-produced the project and engineered the inner-workings of the installation. The Max/MSP patch orchestrates the sound, video, and movement, running through three audio exciters placed on copper sculptures, four surrounding speakers, a video projection, and a ceiling-mounted webcam. The latter is used to analyse the movement of the spectators, relative to the three sculptures, to then act upon the sound accordingly. The whole is choreographed via a 9-tone matrix that is based on the number PHI, in an ever-evolving relation between body and system, between sculpture and speaker. The video clips, processed with the same matrix, never appear in the same order. Layers of abstraction exert a mutual influence on each other, as Calvino's engagement with myths and realities is brought into a contemporary context.
Documentation of Max Patches - Evolution and Subpatches
Additional Photos
From Datum to Narrative
In this series of works, entitled From Datum to Narrative, I explore sense-making and interpretation by using Max/MSP to translate a live camera feed to sound. Here, the analytics I draw from the live images (movement tracking, RGB colour, object mapping, etc.) act upon sounds and signals. Four layers of electric guitar polymetric patterns go in and out of phase with each other, using the symmetry of the augmented scale. Two synthetic layers pull from violin samples, one with a pulsing wave that interacts with the movement on the y-axis of the video, another with a granular sheen, both individually being pitch-shifted microtonally in accordance with the images.
This iteration of From Datum to Narrative plays with symmetry and poetry in order to engage with the notion that our minds fundamentally rely on recognizable and categorizable patterning. Perception takes the data that our senses collect and translates it through patterns and boxes that the mind is familiar with so that it forms comprehension. Here, I use musical scales as alternative boxes to replace our sense of movement and direction, and sine waves to replace light waves through the RGB color values of the video. The distorted poem I wrote and titled "Parodie de Symétrie" (see below) contains lines that are mirrors of themselves in a satirical saturation of phonetic symmetry.
Parodie de Symétrie
ne m'irrite plus. tu mérites plus.
tu n'hérites de rien. ne dis pas de rien.
de ça, j'en suis sûr: sur les gens, à deux
on sèmera nos graines de reines et rois
et on s'aimera, sans peine, sans haine—
le sang froid.