Two occasions of evolving participation between Tatiana Kocmur and Borut Savski – 2021 and 2022.

The two artists continue to explore the temporal and spatial boundaries between physical presence and the digital images. Experimentation within the physical and virtual led the artist to think about dissociation / dislocation – meaning the principle of moving away from the body / physicality. This phenomenon occurs when communicating at a distance, where physical bodies (or several of them) are not present in the same space – and the phenomenon of time and space lag occurs.

Technically, at the heart of the system is a custom made video software (OpenCV and Python), that receives live camera image, records pieces of camera videos, and by playing the recorded fragments in parallel to live image introduces ever more mixed up images. It ends up with a high degree of randomness in a very dense video image. The translation from life to art is achieved at the very end with high level of abstraction. This happens when the camera is set to observe it’s own image.

The sound fragments are also constantly recorded and added randomly a bit later. The two musicians have to adapt to these sounds. Over time the sounds are multilayered to such an extent that they start to enhance the dominant spectral parts of sound – the noise/ the saturation.

The two artists start with a very basic functions: they have to produce the sound (the role as musicians) and the movement (the role of moving bodies). The two bodies work to fill the multimedia bank so that the technological system can later function as independently as possible – without the physical bodies. Both bodies are more and more embedded in the machine’s dynamics, to which they adapt – or oppose. The machine is the cloud. The cloud is a system. The system is a person – and it is not predictable.

The performance has roughly three parts:

the almost real-time (physical) presence, little time-lags, echoes, etc – a concert / recording o9f visuals and sounds; occasional mosaic visual effect glitches
the randomly combined visuals from the first part and the live image / in sound the addition of the sound fragments from the first part / enhanced video mosaic effect
two layers of visuals from the part before – plus the live image

The ending is the fourth part that can perpetuate indefinitely. The machine has no need for new bodies. It produces visual abstractions that are not very predictable. Both artists take on the rople of technicians who help the machine – to produce the nice abstractions: the art.

It should be noted that on the first event Asynchronicity (2021) the system crashed and the result was predominantly a concert. The second event The Cloud (2022) was a very satisfactory experience for both the artists and the public.

Video software is being developed by Borut Savski for his participation at various projects. He also built all the musical instruments that were used: a turbo-guitar, two midi turbo-flutes and three wireless motion sensors with receiver.

Photos by Nina Pernat