Incessant Spring
a project with Kedrick James selected for the virtual gallery exhibit
at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay
2015-2016 Featured Artist Researchers
The Featured Artist Researchers are selected by the jurors from open submissions.
These researchers represent innovative arts integrated research from around the world.
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Kedrick James & Giorgio Magnanensi
Series Title: Incessant Spring Medium: Transformed video data and stills University of British Columbia, Vancouver New Music, Laboratio Arts Society, and Vancouver Community CollegeLink to more information: http://www.kedrickjames.net https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/ |
Biographies
Kedrick James uses procedural techniques to create poetry in text, sound, image, video, and environmental installation formats. With a focus on ecological sustainability and poetics of information environments, his work treats raw data to processes of cultural recycling, regeneration and iterative remix. He works at the University of British Columbia.Giorgio Magnanensi is a composer and conductor. His diverse artistic practice includes electroacoustic improvisation, circuit–bending and video art. He is artistic director of Vancouver New Music, Laboratorio Arts Society and lecturer at the School of Music of The Vancouver Community College. |
Abstract
Incessant Spring is a collaborative project inspired by natural spring water. Using video footage of a spring head, this digital imagery is transformed through a variety of processes in order to visualize the life force of natural water. Conveying the notion of data transformation as an aesthetic practice, our work follows data through multiple iterative remixes, the breakdown and reconstruction of mediated expression. As an ecological art form within the context of digital environments, this project examines how water as image data can be aesthetically transformed in the same way that water as a molecular substance can be biologically transformed.
Incessant Spring is a collaborative project inspired by natural spring water. Using video footage of a spring head, this digital imagery is transformed through a variety of processes in order to visualize the life force of natural water. Conveying the notion of data transformation as an aesthetic practice, our work follows data through multiple iterative remixes, the breakdown and reconstruction of mediated expression. As an ecological art form within the context of digital environments, this project examines how water as image data can be aesthetically transformed in the same way that water as a molecular substance can be biologically transformed.
About the Musical Soundscape
The music accompanying this video was collaboratively composed by Giorgio Magnanensi and Kedrick James. One evening, while visiting Giorgio at his home on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, we were discussing poetry, the music of the human voice as it appears in print and if it would be possible to get the mood and tone of a poem across in a way that transcends the semantic load of the lyrics. I (Kedrick) had brought with me a well-loved and worn copy of the Axion Esti by Odysseas Elytis (1972), a poem that I first was introduced to by my father who was of Greek heritage. I had previously recorded my seriously ill father reading this poem in Greek, but had lost the recording when my computer was stolen shortly thereafter. So we decided to record me reading it in English using his intonations. We began with “Sixth Reading: Prophetic” and Giorgio began to work his electro-alchemical magic, using various processors, including the granular synthesis software created by another close friend, Chris Rolfe. Although some of the versions we produced that night bore closer relation to the actual text, this one, I feel, accomplished what we set out to do. It stirs up memories for me: memory is a key theme of the poem, and also the key motivation of why we were reading and reworking that poem in particular. It is also the memory-scape that came to light while I was creating the original images that Giorgio processed and are incorporated in the video. The video, created by Pauline Sameshima, allows these sounds and images to articulate, like the hinges of a door that swings open both ways, to the past and to the future, to recall and to remix.
The music accompanying this video was collaboratively composed by Giorgio Magnanensi and Kedrick James. One evening, while visiting Giorgio at his home on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, we were discussing poetry, the music of the human voice as it appears in print and if it would be possible to get the mood and tone of a poem across in a way that transcends the semantic load of the lyrics. I (Kedrick) had brought with me a well-loved and worn copy of the Axion Esti by Odysseas Elytis (1972), a poem that I first was introduced to by my father who was of Greek heritage. I had previously recorded my seriously ill father reading this poem in Greek, but had lost the recording when my computer was stolen shortly thereafter. So we decided to record me reading it in English using his intonations. We began with “Sixth Reading: Prophetic” and Giorgio began to work his electro-alchemical magic, using various processors, including the granular synthesis software created by another close friend, Chris Rolfe. Although some of the versions we produced that night bore closer relation to the actual text, this one, I feel, accomplished what we set out to do. It stirs up memories for me: memory is a key theme of the poem, and also the key motivation of why we were reading and reworking that poem in particular. It is also the memory-scape that came to light while I was creating the original images that Giorgio processed and are incorporated in the video. The video, created by Pauline Sameshima, allows these sounds and images to articulate, like the hinges of a door that swings open both ways, to the past and to the future, to recall and to remix.
