gardening the holy purple

For the creation of the digital project “gardening the holy purple,” we were confronted with the challenge of incarnating a digital project within the digital world without the use of conventional media, such as photography and video. With this admission, the traditional approach of the linear realistic narrative was ruled out from the beginning, therefore ways were sought and mediums which were met within digital art. So inside the core of this project is the creation of a code, which on one hand is bound by basic rules and initial conditions that we have set, but at the same time it can make decisions for the evolution of the project as an elementary AI program. The project is not the same for every viewer, neither every time that it is being repeated for him. Based on this logic, the evolution of time for the project is linear but time takes its own course in the digital world. Each time the viewer visits the website, they don’t only experience a different version of it, but they also “meet” in a different time frame of it. Since we wanted to involve the viewer further for the evolution of the project, we gave the option to record his voice through audio activities. These recordings are incorporated into the project by adding another level of distinction over time.

Having to decide that sound and specifically the human voice is the core of this digital work, its visual representation had to revolve around it and follow a similar methodology. So for each sound incident, we created vertical lines that their form and movement follow the intensity and development of the corresponding audio in the field of frequency. Arranged into two groups with reference to the main core of this project, yet with opposite directions of development constitute the basic visual element of the work. This is further reinforced from the color palette that was chosen since the lines are purple, which is the only color of element throughout the whole project. Their movement is enriched by an additional rotational movement in the space depending on their intensity, as if they were on an invisible platform. Figures that refer to the intensities of their frequencies in sound events, move from behind the lines and rotate with them as a single space.

The digital project was implemented in the form of a dynamic website. For the coding the following programming language were used was JavaScript and PHP. For the audio part the audio framework Tone.js code (tonejs.github.io) was used and for the visuals P5js artwork (p5js.org).

The initial question of purpose was to examine the ways in which a digital play “lives” and “moves” within the digital world, without losing the human element, the time and representation. This leads to the concept of human interaction with digital media or as a programming tool in coding the interaction within the digital project. Based on the above idea, it was observed that the act of recording is a frequent and repetitive relationship between the user and the digital medium. Moreover, it is a repetitive act which is a type of performativity in the above relationship. As a parallel path of symbolism we observe the "cultivation" (gardening) of human information through sound and its mutation into groups of stored data. The next step was to apply the concept of movement through a creative and poetic "choreography" of data, so ideally humanizing the digital material and vice versa. 

Sound benefits the digital art piece by being the main driving force of it. Forming and shifting the result to an aural and visual level through the interactive coding that intervenes. The sound quality of the work exists through three axes. The recording, editing and playback which is applied (mapped) to the programming notation that defines the final sound score. Recording is the connecting bridge of the physical and the digital world. Transforms and stores human information through recording processes to be settled by the user / visitor / viewer.

The second stage, which is the editing, applies the digital rules that will transform the original audio information. This process occurs in subsequent time as it is implemented simultaneously during the third phase of the projects sound score. This way we reach the playback phase, which is now the time to complete the sonic course and experience the final audio result which is not independent of the linearity of the digital choreographic score that accompanies the work in total.
The above development of audio information can occur permanently and simultaneously with multiple developments from the simultaneous users of the digital project. Therefore, the sonic material accumulates daily and gives the feedback for the process that continuously produces differentiated sound palettes.

How can a dance project exist online? What is more important in the context of this specific project to be “translated”, so that on the one hand the logic of setting the stage presence becomes transparent, but on the other hand an autonomous dance project emerges in the digital world? How the presence on stage is digitized and how does the continuous time of the internet change the experience of the finite time of a performance?

By constantly asking such a question, the route of research for digital work has confronted us with issues not only for the limits of alive presence and dance but, above all, in terms of the transformation of relationships. The changes in the coordination of perception, the concept of a different way of structure of the work in proportion to the stage drama, created multiple layers of a common core (for the subject within relations). At the same time, the different forms of reflection of "one" work allowed us to reflect not only on relationships as active processes, but also as conditions of "deactivation", such as when a user goes offline. Like a kaleidoscope that reveals multiple reflections, highlighting new connections between its parts.    

In addition, we investigated the human-machine relationship with the concept of "trace" in the creation of this digital work. So in addition to user-project interaction, we were interested in integrating the users presence through the recording, keeping it in time (as a "file" that is getting enriched while the project is active) and managing it dynamically that in a live show cannot truly exist. Does the time of the visitor within the digital work differ from the time of the work, thus detaching the viewer's experience from the "reality" of the work? A micro- and macro-scale we discovered along the way and we tried to use.

The current internet space appears as a field of new word of expression for dance, as another "choreography" emerges away from any closed circle which is familiar in order to explore its limitations. Although the need for the presence of the body is wanted, it is replaced by new perceptual connections with the environment, but also with its own "self". What is required here is the reflection on the importance of space as a differentiating system and having the element of identity. The performance of a digitally mediated condition of the project ‘holy purple’, facilitates the connection of the physical absence of the body with the digital presence of sound, which as another physical expression articulates a plurality and replaces the identity of the project and makes it legible.

The project is approached both as a collective "experiment" as much as a way of expression or experience. At the same time the viewer is placed in the center of the system and critically affiliates to the project in order to interact with it. Receiving a big role into the creation brings to the limelight the crucial question of how specific forms of knowledge, identification and control are constructed, since this new condition affects the relationship that is developing between the viewer and the project, changes the balance between them and configures new shapes in the construction of their association with each other. Then, the time that is experienced forms an area that allows the emergence of new forms and representations of the project through a different scene that becomes accessible through technology. The voices of the audience gives volume to the play, flesh, an impetuous "body". In this place every rational movement that has immobility is prevented, aiming at the invention of a new "language" that drifts the viewer and arouses the flesh in the way that an infant accumulates before acquiring its universality.

holy purple

Where parts of the intersections of the physical and the digital, to the points of contact of the presence and the absence, all of the choreographic research and all the forms of the project pursued the trace of human life. How it looks, how it gradually disappears, how it brightens or darkens, how it articulates or calms and how it can communicate, dream or change.

As a choreographic practice it has codified | codification: short changes of elements in symbolism which for a few are common and are also recognized, for some who lack decoding tools are remained hidden. This encoding found implementations in different "languages". But how can it be the trace of flesh for each one individually?
As arranged elements, five of them were chosen to be specific associated tendencies.

1    1        1 ⇆ 1        1 ↔ 1        1← →1        1 →|← 1

First they were studied on the human body.
a) Through the awareness which the movement activates b) From the rhythm of internal motion | a motion which is hardly seen from the viewer and also the movement that expands outwards | which is shifted creating a world. Anything that was defined as number "1" originally referred to "points" of the human body | any part of which was sustained as a whole, or any part of it is a key link in its neuromuscular mechanism. 2 parts of them were chosen to be studied | 1 and 1 | but then again also in 3 and 4 parts of it | e.g. the ratio 1 ↔ 1 in 3 & 4 points:

                 

Observing the relations of the most active universe of motion whose synthetic elements | relations | cultivated for each performer, a sub-code was formed | relations that are added one after the other and that have a stratification of ways in processing and ways of attention | modes of attention.

Two of these parallel sub codes and the relationship trends of their flows | most active mobile worlds | composed the basic and common code for the digital project “gardening the holy purple”

Λ:(1 →|← 1 111 1 1 1111 1← →1 1111 1 ⇆ 1 111)x3 1 ⇆ 1     1 →|← 1    

Κ:(1 →|← 1 111 1 1 111 1 ⇆ 1 111 1 1 1111 1← →1 111)x3 Χ 1 1     1 ⇆ 1    

score positions 2 = color ___

score positions 4 = color ___

score positions 3 = color ___

Λ: 1   ⇆   1     1        1    1            1    1←   →1    1 →|← 1    1  →|← 1     1  →|← 1   1←   →1     1     ⇆   1   1        1   1    ↔  1 __      

Κ:   1 ⇆ 1    1   →|←  1   1←   →1    1   ⇆   1   1 →|← 1   1     ⇆   1   1←   →1   1 →|←  1   1       1    1       1    1   →|←  1   1     ⇆   1

But like any composition of elements | total | even one that synthesizes elements with no distinct boundaries like this, also conveyed another thing: Whatever exists between them.
The empty gaps.

These empty gaps, their silence, their echoes of anything that happened previously and those who follow, their conflict of what maintained them and those created in the imagination and isolation and their association to the rhythm of interior and exterior, revealed the reflection of motion.

gardening the holy purple
In "gardening the holy purple", leaving the urge of capturing the dance project to leave an imprint in the digital world, for illustration or representation, we examined the possibilities of the "digitalization" of dance. We started off with how a "physical body" could be represented on a website, that is, what is included by the digital world as an appropriate element so that it can represented in the form of reality, and what elements of the "actual" world are located, analyzed and ultimately included, so as to render their form in a digital environment. We researched for what is defined as alive, not as what is represented at the present time, but as having memory and levels of condensation and dilution of recorded information, which define how it is in present.

We searched for anything alive and any relation that could come in contact with their past, in order to form common grounds with others.

The research eventually unfolded through the human voice. Through something that has escaped from their body but still contains to it, through something that doesn’t exist without a body but at the same time something that has managed to elude from it, through how words can be expressed and the desire for communication but seeps through the meaning almost metaphysically.
The work evolves through the split between the digital-physical world and presence-absence. It implies somehow to human life through the common space of voices it created, detached voices whispering, the interjection, the gasp for air, the breath, the screaming and the silence (audio activities which were selected to be recorded by the users-viewers).