ABOUT PERFORMANCE
Sublimation Revision is an experimental audio-visual performance that utilises modulation, granulation and feedback loops on sonic and visual material to arrive at electrifying blend of gentle and brutal always on the border between the abstract and conrete. It draws material from experiements with a/v compression algorithms and custom digital signal processing using free software tools (Linux, Pure Data). Thematically it deals with notions of shame and beside-ness in immersive techno-society and its ethical implications.
The theoretical point of departure of the project Sublimation Revision is a modification of the concept of sublimation as pointed out by the American psychologist Silvan Tomkins. With this modification – which actually treats the system of affects as a system of understanding human nature and man’s existence –, this audiovisual project tackles technological integration of an individual. This research of televisuality and hypersound as an opus of intermedia and performative projects is connected to years-long in-depth consideration of the concept of shame (as affect and as situation). Both at the visual and the sound-music level, we employ methods that allow us to peel off, transform, and control meanings and emotive charges: sublimation, abstraction; deconstruction of image, word, melody, sound colour; residuals of association and nostalgia; stuttering; distortion, creation, and manipulation of self-image. Through these processes of producing art materials which are positioned into a non-linear structure of an audio-visual performance art piece, we are keeping a connection with the thematic starting points, at the same time also investigating the materiality of the media with which we work.
In this peeling, we search for moments of (phenomenological) opening to the world as flesh, as something that exists as unfathomable, yet irrevocably real. The work is based on technologies of de/coding image, text, and sound information and gaps. The key to them is located in DSP (digital signal processing) algorithms that today present technical grounds for the transmission of all audio-visual contents via digital interfaces. The digital present is positioned in a historical context of technologies, such as the fax, analogue TV broadcast, radio, and film.
One of the crucial elements in the process of making audio-visual contents is a visual-audio artefact that emerges with the overuse of compression in the coding of multimedia materials (mp3, avi, ogg, and other codecs). We are dealing with a search of the limits of contemporary technologies that take part in the creation of self-image – or better, are an essential part of subjectification. This process presents the focal point for the construction of a set of tools that enable sound and image processing in real time. Seen from the art-historical perspective, we are dealing with glitch art: using error as a means for disclosing the materiality of the medium. We are interested in the process of individual’s subjectification, becoming, actuality, and affective transformation of her/his self-image. We are considering the mechanisms of contemporaneity that co-create and crucially mark our self-imaging, for we are dealing with an intertwinement of the images of the body and of the media that mediate them. In the words of Amelia Jones, we could say that we struggle for activation and not for suppression of our dislocatedness, projection, and identification.
Technical raider
CREDITS
Created and performed by: Luka Prinčič, Maja Delak
Programming: Luka Prinčič
SUPPORT
Produced and supported by: WNDV, Emanat
FILES
WNDV Sublimation Revison home page
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/18079689
Previous events
- , F.A.C.K., Cesena, IT
- , ICMC 2012, Ljubljana, SI
- , Network Music Festival, Birmingham, UK
- , Zvo.či.ti, Kino Šiška, Ljubljana, SI
- , Landmark, Piksel 11, Bergen, NO
- , Stadtwerkstadt, Liwoli 11, Linz, AT
- , LAC 11, Landmark, NUI Maynoothe, IE