Ritual for Synthetic Media

First Performance 2022, Single Channel Video 2023

Live Video Processing by Debora Bernagozzi

Custom Software (SC Frame Buffer), Google Earth Hacking, Sound by Jason Bernagozzi

 

"Ritual for Synthetic Media" is a single channel video recorded from a live video and sound performance by Debora and Jason Bernagozzi.

 

Notes toward a statement

 

Jason:

The reason that the footage is interesting is because it is attempting to map our world and in exposing the inadequacies of it being able to map our world, it becomes a commentary about the ephemeral nature of things that seem monumental and permanent. Maybe even, like, the idea of the constructed, not as an end, but almost as a continuous growing and shifting thing.Google Earth is attempting to map our world, but in a way, it kind of exposes the fragility of what it is our world is made of.

 

The sound elements are all granular synthesis and stretched moments of clicking hard drive failure sounds. Those are then being warped into soundscapes and musical movements. The live process is live granular synthesis from pre-recorded sounds of hard drives trying to boot up, clicking, and failing. The granules of those frequencies were then stretched, amplified, pitched shifted, panned, and remixed live using custom software built in Max/MSP by Jason.

 

Debora:

Worlds fall apart. Things fall apart. People fall apart. No matter how solid structures appear, there is a tenuous web of entropic processes at the core of everything.

 

When I live process video, I’m not working from a rehearsed performance or simply performing a set of effects, I am feeling that video on a deep, physical level, and - combined with a solid relationship with my tools enabling nuanced expression - take both myself and the viewer into the video, experiencing it, embodying it, and emerging. Through the processing, I am further exposing the ephemeral qualities of signal and matter, while recombining the imagery to create new worlds, new energies. In these performances, Jason’s sound affects my experience of the video, and my visual responses to that affect his sound choices. We are traveling in the space of the media together.