As Above
Audiovisual artwork, 2020
As Above is an audiovisual artwork that interweaves the auditory and the visual in an interchangeable and inseparable object-shadow relationship. Employing evocations of mirror images, shadows, and fractals, the production techniques, and the engaged themes can be effectively expressed in ‘as above so below’, hence the title.
This project includes several leftovers from previous works. As I tend to turn and return to the theme ‘as above so below’ frequently, a part of the materials that are left behind tends to align on this thread. Within this work, an earlier model of a Mandelbulb (a 3-dimensional fractal), and sections from two different poems are connected along the overarching theme. Through a series of operations, these imageries are incorporated into an audio and a video output. These outputs are essentially the same in that they are two expressions of the same frequencies.
The operations start with Paul Fennell’s open-source Max MSP patch that transcribes images as frequencies and allows sound generation. The words of the poems (formatted as images) and the Mandelbulbs (which were generated and rendered in Blender using Daniel White’s formulations and Jonas Dichelle’s examples) are processed through this patch.
In Logic Pro X, the resulting signals/audio files are fed to a granular synthesizer alongside multiple foley recordings of sand and impact sounds to generate a soundscape and a landscape in tandem. The arid atmosphere of the emerging sound/landscape alludes to the poems’ visual devices. The recordings are routed to various effects and reverbs, which are modulated throughout, to create auditory and visual motion using the audio interface and iZotope Insight 2’s visual interface (spectrogram) simultaneously.
The poems refer to the self-generation of things and to systems manifesting their organization in their highest and lowest levels alike. The Mandelbulb is a 3-dimensional fractal which yields detail forever, no matter how close or how far. The video is the audio and the audio is the video. Thus; as above so below.
In collaboration with Arda Saraçoğlu
‘veiled on a dune
she opens up, her arms
the desert falls out
sea is swallowing seas
sand is swallowing hills
time is swallowing minds’