Punto y Raya Academy 2024 / Masterclass by Maura McDonnell

This lecture by Professor Maura McDonnell will give a light introduction to the emergence of visual music from early beginnings, through various technologies and mediums to present day practices.

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• Non-narrative

Masterclass by Vibeke Sørensen. Vibeke Sørensen is an artist and professor working in digital multimedia, animation, interactive architectural installation, physical computing, and networked visual music. Her creative work includes Illuminations (2013), a large scale illuminated folding screen, an interactive visual-music installation incorporating plant biofeedback, ubiquitous computing, and electro-acoustic music that she composed. Vishwaroop (2014) is a 4K generative dome animation with music by sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, and Mood of the Planet (2015) is a kinetic light-sound sculpture incorporating global, real-time big data, Twitter, and music composed by Sørensen. Her work, Mayur (2015), with music by Kartik Seshadri, is a 4K animation inspired by Asian textiles, symbols, and cosmologies. She has produced wearable technologies incorporating biofeedback, abstract animation and music including Digital Amulet: Smart Necklace (2017), and her most recent installation Starlight (2021) is in collaboration with NTU physicists Prof Lock Yue Chew and Dr. Andri Pradana, as well as CSH Vienna / SFI Complexity Scientist Prof John Stephen Lansing. Starlight is an interactive installation that visualizes Quantum Entanglement using actual data from the Cosmic Bell Experiment. Her current research and creative work engages bio and eco-art/design, and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University it includes explorations of musical and calendrical polyrhythms from Bali to Kauai, and on the emergence of Jungian archetypes from dream networks.

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Generative art uses code and algorithms in a creative and artisanal manner to generate infinite animations that never repeat. But how? In her masterclass, Anna Carreras will introduce us to the peculiarities and characteristics of this medium, illustrating it with her personal research and body of work. The talk offers an exploration of how algorithms and code, used in an artisanal and creative way, can generate unique and infinite abstract animated pieces.The presentation concludes with a Q&A session open to audience participation.

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Visual Music is one of the most historically rich subgenres of abstract audiovisual art. From its beginnings, women have always been working in this field at the intersection of technology, sound, and film, yet most of them do not appear in history books. In this masterclass, we honoured some of these pioneers, all of whom were obsessed with seeing sound or hearing images.

• Documentary
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• Abstract
• Experimental
• Non-narrative

In this talk, Paul Prudence talked about his performance work, which focuses on ways in which sound and generative video can be cross-wired to create live visual-music experiences. He unravelled his process looking at the use of generative graphics combined with sound collage and field recordings to create narrative fictions from the materials of pure abstraction. He touched on his use of expanded projections systems, such as planetarium domes and large screen configurations, to create hypnotic and immersive live experiences.

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MASTERCLASS – THE PLEASURE OF MOVEMENT. Wrangling an Infant Technology by JOSÉ-MANUEL XAVIER (PT), with the kind translation of SANDRA RAMOS. “The pleasure of movement is what I feel when I bring strokes, lines, and dots to life. My work method is identical to my way of walking through nature. I advance, step by step, through unexpected paths to discover the unimaginable.”

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MASTERCLASS – ARCHITECTURAL FRACTALS by JULIUS HORSTHUIS (NL). “I’ll take the audience through some of the fractal landscapes. We will look at some of the characteristic features of those fractals, almost like we’re watching architectural facets. What creates those features? What is it about fractal math that makes it so engaging? What else is there to explore?” – Julius Horsthuis

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In this MasterClass, the artist Aurora Gasull discussed her fascinating journey through what became known as Visual Music, abstract cinema, absolute cinema…; her personal motivations and tools at the beginning of this path, and their development until today, in chronological order.

• Documentary
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• Experimental
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• Non-narrative

In this talk, Blas Payri addressed different aspects of the relationship between the moving image and music, treating both the experimental results of the perception and cognition of music / image as well as their creation processes.

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In this touching presentation, Pedersen describes the creative and visual processes behind three of his films produced by Mikrofilm: The folkloric anxiety of The Boyg (2016), The looping limbo of Zolle: Resign (2021) and the nuclear petri dish of Little Boy (2018).

• Documentary
• Abstract
• Experimental
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• Non-narrative

The talk focuses on the interdisciplinary relations between various areas of knowledge, that were the sources of inspiration for the creation of the final imagery, sound, and movement in the animated works of Miguel Pires de Matos. With a background in architecture, music and animated film, Miguel Pires de Matos will discusses some of the strategies and abstract operations behind his short film 4 Estados da Matéria (4 States of Matter, 2018) and the film he co-directed with other guest architects for MONSTRA Animation Festival in Lisbon, titled compositio III (2012).

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MASTERCLASS – ALTERED DIMENSIONS. Abstract Audiovisual Works of Art by ZSOLT GYENES (HU). Gyenes’ talk focuses on Sound / Image connections; on what Synchrony, Asynchrony and “Synchresis” actually mean.

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