Generativity : Understory
Fernanda D’Agostino
section cybertheorie
In Psychology, “generativity” is focus on future
generations; in Biology, structures of proliferation; for Linguists, using
rules to generate varying meanings from underlying forms. Generative art
uses coding to produce evolving meaning outside the creator’s direct
control. All these definitions helped shape the artists’ process as they
developed their collaborative project “Generativity.” Also driving the work
is the sense of the world at a tipping point, particularly in relationship
to the precarious state of the natural world.
Generativity is an
installation combining architecture, an electro acoustic sound space, video
projections and live performance. The project investigates the
underlying and often invisible structures through which the natural world
sculpts and regenerates itself. Dr. John Reuter, head of the Portland State
University’s School of Environmental Studies, saw these as a distinct set of
forms that can be discovered over and over again at every scale in the
natural world.* They are the code through which nature writes its
generations. Generativity is the creation of new media installation
artist Fernanda D’Agostino, with a performance by interdisciplinary artist
Isabelle Choinière integrated within the installation, both as a
technological echo through the duration of the exhibition, and as a live
performance mid way through its run. Both Fernanda and Isabelle are known
for finding in their work a way to bridge the gaps between technological
progress, spirituality, and a heightening of the senses. Fernanda and
Isabelle both believe that while new technology often acts as a distancing
mechanism drawing people away from the poetics of the living world, its
extraordinary power can also be used to heighten the senses in unprecedented
ways.
Generativity draws on
natural systems in its over arching response to the architecture of Suyama
Space by shaping “understory” “canopy” and “landmark” levels of the space as
interactive experiences for viewers to explore. Three monumentally scaled
projections: a free standing dual sided arced screen 10’ high by 18’ wide, a
circular screen 10’ in diameter that seems to penetrate the floor to a pool
below and a larger than life projection of human figures seemingly floating
on a gallery wall, provide the “landmark” moments of the experience by which
viewers orient themselves. Original programming in Max MSP Jitter allows
these projections to respond to viewers’ presence and varying levels of
attention. Viewers drawn to the projections experience shifts in content,
tempo and layering, giving the projections a living quality as their content
evolves in real time. Projections programmed this way mystify viewers as
their endlessly varying quality does not conform to our cultural
expectations for moving images. Projected on the arc of the main scrim
screen are structures in nature in motion, layered with a distillation of
Choiniere’s performance Fleshwaves (Phase 4).
This big screen –a bit like the Tilted Arc in its intention and scale
in relation to the space- shapes viewers’ paths through the installation.
Because of its transparency, projections not only appear on the screen but
spill over onto the walls and floor of the gallery. From one vantage point
it acts as a foil for larger than life projections of Isabelle’s
Fleshwaves (Phase 4) performance,
seemingly floating on a nearby gallery wall. Since the screen is transparent
and dual sided, it also reads as a kind of window or lens. Its transparent
apparitional character dissolves the space. A viewer standing on either side
sees both the projections on this screen and those on the walls and gallery
floor beyond. This big screen wall is the alpha gesture in the
choreography of viewer movement around the space. Along with programming in
Max MSP Jitter, the random nature of the physical layering produced by the
transparency of this screen creates an almost infinite variability in
content. As different images layer together, the viewer experiences not a
time based narrative with its familiar arc leading up to a climax, but
instead a flow of time more like a stream of consciousness or day dream. The
predictable loop of most video art is replaced by a fluid interweaving of
sound and image.
Another architecturally scaled projection anchors the
side of the space opposite Choiniere’s monumental figures. By mounting a
thin screen flush with the floor, the illusion of a circular penetration
through the boards to an actual body of water is suggested. Content on this
screen is water related and includes underwater performance footage created
in collaboration with artist/choreographer Linda K Johnson. Layering in this
projection combines Johnson’s hypnotic movements with spill from the
transparent screen, as well as a programmed layer of natural pattern found
in aquatic environments. D’Agostino commissioned the original choreography
from Johnson. Her gestures abstract the palette of natural forms studied by
environmental scientists.
Sound sculptures at the “canopy” level create a subtle
infiltration of the architecture and play a supporting role in shaping the
viewer’s experience. An overall fog of ambient sound (waves on Puget Sound)
animates (In Italian anima is soul) the entire space. Within this overall
atmosphere, parabolic (focusing) speakers add details within circumscribed
radii of audibility. One focal point is where the, at times disturbing,
sounds of Isabelle’s performers is experienced. As part of her daily
“collecting and archiving” practice in the Pacific Northwest, Fernanda
collected both endangered native seeds and field recordings of animal cries.
These strange and haunting sounds are focused in two additional loci. A more
narrowly focused parabola surprises viewers on entry to the space with a
pool of these sounds only audible within a six foot radius. The final locus
of sound was created in collaboration with a glass blower as a “colony” of
smaller sonic parabolas and pods covering the lower section of the South
wall. Viewers approaching this colony are surprised when their presence
triggers a gradually building chorus. As was the case with the video,
programming in Ableton Live and Max MSP Jitter constantly alters the sound
space in response both to the presence of viewers and to the quality of
their movements through the space, further enhancing the sense of being
within a living, evolving space.
“Understory” pathways sculpted from natural materials
add dimension to the spacial choreography. Lattices and nets of mature
vines are an expression of the dendritic pattern found in water currents, in
our cardiovascular systems, in mycelium, in the circulatory systems of
plants as well as in wiring, traffic and other human made systems. Vines
cleared from large trees have a memory of the three dimensional form of
their host; in the upright position they become ghost trees. These
vines create the borders of a system of paths and arcades. Eddies and
openings in the paths lead viewers to finer grained experiences, to focused
sound loci such as the abstracted voices of Fleshwaves (Phase
4), to a sculpture, or to an invitation to observe something very
intimate like a collection of blown glass seed vials.
Nested within the installation both as the
technological echo of a prior happening and as a real time event,
Choiniere’s Fleshwaves (Phase 4) is an
augmented reality performance exploring the relationships arising from the
interaction between the body in movement and technologies of sound
spatialization, and now with this new phase of work, with live programming
for video.
The artists integrate technologies in their artistic
research as a means to reach unpredictable sensory experiences, unknown
territories. One hears a sound. One listens to murmurs and chants. But can
one feel those sounds? Perceive them differently?
On November 19th, 2016, the installation
was brought more fully to life with a performance of Phase5, developed in
residence with local performers at D’Agostino’s Portland, Oregon studio.
Under a faint glow appears a three-dimensional human sculpture: five women,
bodies intertwined, form a Collective Body. Transported by the chant
of their own murmurs, they slowly carry one another into a continuous wave.
Bodies and breaths entangle, the women are simultaneously five bodies and
one same mass, five voices and one choir. From the different dynamics of
movement emerges an organic electro-acoustic sound-scape. Each performer is
fitted with a black head wrap concealing a wireless transmitter; each wears
a tiny mike and each has a contact speaker mounted on her cheek bone. As the
performers vocalize, they feel the vibrations in their bodies. These
vocalizations are heard in real time by audience and performers, but they
are also manipulated in MAX, MSP Jitter and Ableton Live and sent in waves
and vortices in a sound space constructed around the performers and viewers.
Traveling in space, the sound scape grazes the performers’ skin and
resonates in their movements. Acting as the sixth performer of the piece,
the sound also surrounds the spectators, integrating them in the live sound
form. The human skin is sensitive to touch, but while it perceives
intensities and warmth, it can also be aroused by the vibrations of sound
and light. Washes of natural imagery mark their stories on the bodies
through a new live video performance developed by D’Agostino, in
collaboration with Choiniere. The skin is a land to write on and the flesh
is a river to enter.
Through responsive video programming written in Max MSP Jitter; through performance using augmented reality; and through a three dimensional sound space, Generativity uses technology not as a distraction from physical reality, but as a way to heighten viewers’ perceptions of its enchantments. There is a tension between our accelerating environmental crisis and the technological revolution. Generativity attempts to subvert this tension to suggest to the viewer new ways to perceive their entanglement with the living world.
Biography
Since 1984 Fernanda has completed twenty-five public
commissions and fifteen solo exhibitions, many incorporating moving images
in novel ways. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.
Her work has been recognized by a Bronson Fellowship, a Flintridge
Foundation Fellowship, Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and
The Andy Warhol Foundation, and state fellowships in Montana and Oregon.
Recently she received a Ford Family Foundation Opportunity Grant to fund her
installation, “The Method of Loci.” Fernanda is a pioneer in the use of
outdoor video projections in public art. “Celestial Navigations,” video
projections on a monumental navigational instrument, is sited at Seattle
International Airport. (SEATAC) Portland State University’s “Intellectual
Ecosystem” was a 2011 USA National Year in Review selection for its
innovative use of moving images in a public place. Video from her
installation, Motion Studies, has screened at Rencontres Internationales
Sciences et Cinémas, France; 809 International New Image Art Festival–China;
Technarte, Spain; Madcat International Film Festival; EVA, London; Flying
Films Festival, Berlin and at the Mumbai International Film Festival where
it was a National Film Board of India selection in Experimental Media.
Recently Fernanda was a visiting artist at the American Academy of Rome, to
begin development of “The Method of Loci” a multi-chambered interactive
video installation. Her 2011 interactive video installation “Pool” was
exhibited as part of the Bronson Foundation’s 20 Year Anniversary Exhibition
at the Eric and Ronna Hoffman Gallery of Art, since then video from the
project has screened at experimental video festivals around the world,
including Cyberfest St Petersburg, Russia, NMinutes Festival Shanghai, and
Video Guerrilha, Sao Paolo Brazil. “Pool” was installed in its entirety at
“Currents; The Santa Fe International Festival of New Media” in June 2012.
“Living Calligraphy” was recently screened at the Pompidou/Metz in France.
Last Fall Fernanda was in residence at Can Serrat International Artists
Center in Barcelona, Spain where she projected video from “The Method of
Loci” on the cliffs and ruins of Mont Serrat. “The Method of Loci” was
exhibited in its entirety at The Art Gym in Portland in Fall 2013.
Individual room sized installations from “The Method of Loci” will travel to
Currents 2014, Santa Fe, New Mexico and to SOMARTS, San Francisco, in Summer
of 2014. Fernanda is currently adapting work from The Method of Loci for a
digital dome exhibition in Sao Paulo, Brazil, October 2014.
Reviews
Seattle Weekly: With ‘Generativity,’ Suyama Space’s End Transforms into a Meditation on Fecundity
Suyama Space
: Fernanda d'Agostino Generativity
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