The origin and conceptualization of life are ancestral philosophical questions; the scientific concept of life seems to be still imprecise and disputed. Reflecting on the absurd frontier between inanimate matter and animate matter urges us to question our singular origins as subjects. The installation materia animata operates amidst this border. By proposing an environment composed of lamps subject to randomness and non-determinism, which acquire spiritus vitae by human interaction, life here is tensioned, taken as a strange fact, from its material aspects. After all, the unknown essence that allows certain clusters of atoms to differentiate themselves from the others, reaching a degree of structural and functional organization capable of replicating and transmitting whatever is the continuity of this process - the perpetuation of life - is a haunting mystery. And suddenly, something is gone and we - mere heaps of living atoms - are converted into inanimate matter, dissipating us into infinite atoms that will one day form other heaps of matter. Ultimately, materia animata resorts to the estrangement of our own material processes to propose a reflective atheist-nihilistic experience about ourselves and the great absurdity of being here, reflecting on whatever.
materia animata is an installation artwork with interactive sound and lighting, executed on marine, a free and open source software. It uses a moviment capture sensor to control 12 lamps and a set of soundtracks. Lamps and soundtracks behave in distinct ways, according to the way audience interacts with them, but also in a non-deterministic way, sometimes autonomously.
Conception and Programming: Ricardo Scholz
Sound Conception: Iuri Brainer
Guiar Festival Internacional de Screendance, at Galeria de Artes Digitais do Porto Mídia, Recife/PE/Brazil, from October 9th to 13th, 2018.
New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME'19), at Centro de Convenções da UFRGS, Porto Alegre/RS/Brazil, from June 3rd to 6th, 2019.
Software: marine.