Presented by Cosmic Sound, Char Stiles and Rachel Wagner are among the artists in an evening of A/V performance at the Mattress Factory on June 22 at 8:00pm.
As the duo Spednar + REW, Kevin Bednar and Rachel Wagner combine live-coded sound and responsive programmatic visuals to create an audio/visual piece which entwines minimalism and maximalism through a monochromatic lens. The performance, titled “Computational Chiaroscuro,” presents fleeting and evasive visual states informed by shifting rhythmic structures. Composed using Python, vvvv, Processing, and Resolume, the visuals augment an intentionally absent aural pallet to complete a multisensory experience.
Pittsburgh’s {arsonist} (Danielle Rager) and Char Stiles use live coded audio and visuals to create simulated ecologies. Musical phrases dynamically constrain rules of automaton interactions, leading to the genesis and destruction of synthesized life forms and their sounds. The symbiotic exchanges of the virtual organisms mirror the macro system of feedback between the model and the humans generating the collaborative A/V experience. This work is an extension of Stile’s capstone project “Performing Coding.”