Projected video (DVD 4:3), b&w, sound, 9’ 32’’ (loop)
The maestro is forced to move in a way he never intended to and in this way creates music he never wished for.
Taking CCTV footage of a maestro conducting an orchestra, the position of his baton on each frame was determined, indexed and stored digitally, effectively converting the original diachronic video clip into a database of directly accessible individual frames. Once we had indexed enough frames to representing baton positions covering the whole space of possibilities, we were able to invert the process and start choosing specific frames based on the desired positions of the baton. Having decided it should travel through a circular path, a new frame sequence representing it was rendered again into a new video.
The sound, sampled from a classical symphony, followed a similar process. The original audio was divided into several small parts, which were classified, converted into a database and then rendered together in a different order based on a similar path – a circle.
This way, the maestro in the video is forced to describe circles with his baton while, in a similar circular fashion, the music is forced to become strong or calm, staccato or legato. The result reveals the artificiality of the process but also a new order in which one can almost believe.
Work metadata
- Year Created: 2011
- Original Url: http://projects.nunogodinho.com/2010/maestro/
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Work Credits:
- nununo, primary creator
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