TRANSLATION
by Martina Menegon, Stefano D’Alessio
2013
Interactive installation
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CONCEPT / Translation, the act or process of transalting, especially from one language into another. A Physics Motion of a body in which every point of the body moves parallel to and the same distance as every other point of the body.
Every translation creates a subtle change of the original message.
The work investigates the traslation of a real image into a possible representation of it, using the sound as main media.
The environment’s image is traslated into its sound representation and brought in the environment itself.
By inverting the previous process, the sound is translated into an image that has whithin itself the interferences of the original environment. This creates a visual representation in which those interferences are additional informations of the space, its sound characteristics.
The final result is an iper-image that contains visual and sound informations.
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION / The installation is composed of a camera, a computer, two video monitors, a speaker and a microphone. The camera is looking at the environment and the video image is scanned from top to bottom repeatedly, every scanned row of pixels is immediately translated in to sound and outputted to the speaker. The sound is then captured by a microphone and retranslated in to video, reversing the previous process. The result is shown on the second video monitor and consist in a slow reconstruction of the camera image, done row by row from top to bottom.
OBJECT
by Martina Menegon, Stefano D’Alessio
2012
Interactive installation
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TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION / The main part of the work is an aluminium plate that sounds and moves interacting with the environment. A piezoelectric sensor and an electrodynamic exciter are attached to the plate, connecting it to a computer. The computer catches the sound from the piezoelectric sensor, applies filters and output it to the electrodynamic exciter, creating a feedback. A servo motor pulls the plate dynamically in relation to the distance between the audience and the plate. This distance is measured by an infrared camera positioned under the plate, which is also turning down the output signal when no audience is tracked. The feedback sound is modified by the bending of the plate and two filters: the first changes the audio increasingly in relation to the plate bending and it is created by scanning the camera image and transforming the pixels luminance into a dynamic sound filter. The second filter individuates the continuous notes and cut them. The outcome is a feedback system that changes in connection with itself, the bending of the plate and the camera image.
CONCEPT / Object is a sound object that act following concept of action at a distance. This term was used in early theories of gravity and electromagnetism and consists in the interaction that is able to directly relate two objects that are distant in a space. The main part of Object is an aluminum plate that act like having the same electric charge of the audience, more someone get near to it more the plate is pushed away by a force that makes it bend.
This force affect the relation between the different parts of the object, which are plate, contact microphone, transducer, camera and computer. The communication created between these parts generates a sound that goes back to the audience changing continuously and unpredictably. This sound is the result of multiple interactions, but can be considered also as an object that connects again the elements that created it, an object that unify the interacting parts in one single system.
As Graham Harman argues: “we have a universe made up of objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects, as every object is both a substance and a complex of relations”. A connection between objects is an object itself, which creates bigger object together with the two objects that it connects. A connection is an object and a object is the consequence of a connection. Object is not an interactive installation composed of aluminum plate, contact microphone etc., but is the result of the interaction between the installation and a human body, two connected objects.
OUT OF COUNTENANCE
by Martina Menegon, Stefano D’Alessio
2012
Live Performance
Duration: 20’
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DESCRIPTION / Out of countenance is a dialogue between two faces, deformed and transformed by a digital process into something strange, obsolete. The facial expressions are exagerated and amplified, drew in a 3-Dimensional space, bringing the common feeling of expression in a different and distorted perception. The human face as we know loose its physiognomy, allowing the other face to overlap, mixing, fusing together and turning into a digital creature, a representation of the human in the digital era.
by Martina Menegon, Stefano D’Alessio
Interactive installation
Vienna 2012
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made with MaxMSP/Jitter
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DESCRIPTION / a black screen is standing in the space. No images can be seen through it, no sounds is reproduced. From first impression it seems just a switched off screen. But as far as somebody is passing in front of it, or is just standing near and moving, something appear and suddenly disappear again.
The screen is not only a simple monitor, is a shadow in front of what is real. In fact, by moving, is possible to delete the darkness, and let the image passing through it and be visible. The screen is a shadowed kind of mirror, but dispite of simple mirroring, it shows only what is moving, it shows only what is acting in the real, and delete what is static.
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21st - 30th March 2012 @ embeddedinvisible - Ufak (Vienna) / Curated by Isin Önol
with the works of Wagner Felipe Dos Santos, Miriam Hamann, Liddy Scheffknecht, Anna Vasof
APARAT / VIDEOINSTALLATION
Martina Menegon, Stefano D’Alessio
Interactive installation
@APARAT Vienna 2012
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made with MaxMSP/Jitter
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DESCRIPTION / the installation is located in the bathroom of APARAT in Vienna. Instead of mirroring while washing hands in the bathroom, the people will look at a distorted image of them. The distortion amount and the sound are interactive and change by the amount of movement of the people.
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TECHNICAL DETAILS / one computer, one webcam, speakers
Marta Capitani, Simona Zaccagno
coreography / Marta Capitani
dancers / Pamela Caschetto, Miranda Secondari, Simona Zaccagno, Marta Capitani
live sound / Adam Bourke
MAX/MSP programming / Martina Menegon, Stefano D’Alessio
light director / Vincenzo Schino
Interactive dance performance
Italy 2011
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DESCRIPTION / This was a collaboration with Anagrama Coreografico (see website HERE). The performance was centered in the contrast between senses, the confusion between smiling and crying, in the extreme contraddiction. The company tried to exaggerate the personal characteristics, experimenting with the disharmony of the parts. The dance is related also to the interaction, that capture in realtime those grotesque movements of the body and of the lights, changing the sound materials.
MUYBRIDGE!MUYBRIDGE!
Concept and direction / Filippo Andreatta
By and with / Patric Schott, Daniela Vitale
Music / Stefano D’Alessio
Video / Martina Menegon
Computing / Stefano D’Alessio, Martina Menegon
Theater performance
2011
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DESCRIPTION / In 1872, a man photographed a horse.
The man was Eadweard Muybridge and through his shot he proved that at a certain point, the horse, was with all his four feet off the ground. The horse belonged to Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University and one of the most powerful men in California. Stanford backed Muybridge to become one of the scientists (or perhaps the artists?) most admired of his era. Muybridge went on to invent a clock, several photographic technologies and he also become a father, a widower and a murder. Eventually, the verdict of the trial found him not guilty.
