Multimedia Performance. First experiments between body and devices
Year: 2012
Authors: Caio Bonvenuto, Paloma Oliveira and Mateus Knelsen

2012 Circuito arte.mov São Paulo
2012 study group Mundo em Rede/ Otto Bistrô – PUC SP
2012 Studio Lâmina – Um Brinde a Hilda/ São Paulo-SP
2012 Festival Cineme-se Santos/ SP

A performer (Paloma Oliveira) gives an improvised speech while drowning herself in a transparent bowl with water. The speech emerges from the performer’s relationship with the given situation. The performer is monitored by microphones and cameras, devices that generate a visual database that is processed in real time by the other two participants (Caio Bonvenuto and Mateus Knelsen).

H3O proposes the body as an input, an experiment about a basic cultural action (a speech) in an adverse environment. All the media apparatus of this performative act propose a discussion of media interference in our expressive capability: the same channels that are used to broadcast can also be a means of censorship and distortion. H3O is an experience about borders, silence and its representations. A speech drowned in the very media in which it propagates. The title alludes to homonymous substance present in nature, proposing parallel narratives that run in search of stability.

The sound design for this performance is obtained through generative logic using the Supercollider software, along with live coding techniques (real-time programming). The audio captured from the performer during her drowning act is processed along with programmed synthesizers. Actions taken by the performer affect directly the decisions taken by the generative programming and the audio programmer. Thus, the material aspect of the work maintains itself from speech to water, from water to sound, from sound to the digital medium, in a symbiotic process in which the parties are lost in the whole.

Two cameras monitor the performer. The images from these devices are sampled in real time, composing a database of recorded images. Later, live images are merged with these recorded footage in different periods of the performance. Video processing is done via Puredata, and the decisions concerning the projected images are a combination of software determinism and the programmer’s sensitivity during the live programming performance.

H3O was presented at the Arte.Mov São Paulo (Paço das Artes, June / 2012), Estúdio Lâmina (São Paulo, April / 2012), at the meeting of the Mundo em Rede group (Espaço Otto, Sao Paulo June / 2012), and the Festival Cineme-se, SESC Santos, November / 2012.

H3O from medul.la on Vimeo.