RCAAP Repository

The ZoOHPraxiscope is a modified overhead projector that can be used to show cinematographic animations. It allows blending and mixing of animated shadow play with cinematographic animation. Similar to the Zoopraxiscope that was developed by the photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the 19th century, the ZoOHPraxiscope combines a rotating picture disc with a Laterna Magica and shutter mechanism. The mechanical shutter of the original device is replaced by a high-power LED that can be turned on and off at the fraction of a second. The overhead projector acts as Laterna Magica. This new device is used as a performance instrument to combine sound, vision, shadow play and animation.

In multi-agent systems, local interactions among system components following relatively simple rules often result in complex overall systemic behavior. Complex behavioral and morphological patterns have been used to generate and organize audiovisual systems with artistic purposes. In this work, we propose to use the Actor model of social interactions to drive a concatenative synthesis engine called earGram in real time. The Actor model was originally developed to explore the emergence of complex visual patterns. On the other hand, earGram was originally developed to facilitate the creative exploration of concatenative sound synthesis. The integrated audiovisual system allows a human performer to interact with the system dynamics while receiving visual and auditory feedback. The interaction happens indirectly by disturbing the rules governing the social relationships amongst the actors, which results in a wide range of dynamic spatiotemporal patterns. A performer thus improvises within the behavioural scope of the system while evaluating the apparent connections between parameter values and actual complexity of the system output.

Procedural systems allow unique modes of authorship and singular aesthetic experiences. As creators and users of these systems, we need to be aware that their aesthetic potential is not solely defined by interaction but that interpretation, and the capacity to understand and simulate the processes taking place within these artefacts is highly significant. This paper argues that although direct interaction is usually the most discernible component in the relationship between ergodic artefacts and their users, ergodicity does not necessarily imply interaction. Non-interactive procedural artefacts may allow the development of ergodic experiences through interpretation, and the probing of the system by its reader through simulations. We try to set the grounds for designing towards virtuosic interpretation, an activity that we may describe as the ergodic experience developed by means of mental simulation through the development of theories of systems.

This article emerges from the assumption that representing reality in documentary raises specific complex ethical issues. This is due to the fact that documenting an event partly results from the filmmaker’s mediation with the historical world. The choices involved in this process are subjective, biased and creative. In fact, representing reality results from a particular tension established between that which I represent and how I represent it. From this tension several ethical issues with regard to the filmmaker’s mediation with reality may emerge. This paper aims to revise and confront key literature on this subject to discuss and deconstruct the process of mediation and the ethical issues involved in this process. The key questions to answer are: What role does mediation plays in representing reality? What ethical issues may emerge from this process? Do filmmakers explore “others” to satisfy their own personal needs as artists? Is it possible to control or regulate filmmakers’ mediation with reality? Can we develop a set of parameters or strategies that can be considered ethically more appropriate for representing the world?

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  This review of Nuno Barradas Jorge’s monograph The Films of Pedro Costa welcomes its detailed account of hitherto neglected dimensions of Costa’s work, such as funding, relations with producers, technological aspects of production and postproduction, and the promotional labour of Costa’s media interviews. But it argues that these undoubtedly useful insights come at the expense of sustained close attention to Costa’s striking imagery and use of sound. The most glaring absences in the book are those of racial and class politics, and hence the interface between the two. Jorge’s book is an important contextual study of Costa’s oeuvre, but the immense aesthetic and political power of this filmmaking (both texts and collaborative processes of production) still eludes his grasp.

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The increasing adoption of smart automation has improved people’s lives in several ways, but it has also brought a host of new problems such as deskilling, deepening of structural inequalities, new forms of exploitation, loss of privacy and hindering of human liberties. This paper begins by assuming that such issues are the consequence of poor design and takes the opportunity to analyse what “good design” should mean in turn. Following insights from mediation theory and philosophy of technology, it surveys the general inherent complexities of automation and argues that Human-Centered Design (HCD) continues to endorse an instrumentalist conception of technology. This paper shows that such a conception of human–technology relations significantly limits designers capacity to approach design from a genuinely ethical standpoint. The paper concludes with a sketch of principles that HCD should incorporate to become a truly humanist and ethically-minded design approach.

This paper explores the cognitive aspects of artefactual creativity in new media art. With regards to the diversity of practices in this domain, I focus on generative art projects created primarily by processing the material from cinema, television and the Internet. These projects blend procedural thinking with bricolage, leverage complex technical infrastructures, foster curiosity and encourage vigilance in our critical appreciation of the arts, technology, culture, society, and human nature. I discuss their methodologies, poetic features, cultural and social contexts in three sections which exemplify the effects and consequences of computational paradigm: database logic, statistical abstraction and quantification. Throughout each section, I outline the theoretical considerations that can be educed from the examples, and expand on them in the concluding section which examines the artists’ creative motives and circumstances for analogizing and meaning making in relation to the cognitive and ethical implications of generative new media art.

This book compiles revised and enlarged versions of conferences presented in October 2018 as part of a homage to the director, poet and teacher, that took place at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (ESTC-IPL), Lisbon; an enlarged biographical note by Fátima Ribeiro and also presents, by Maria Patrão, a series of slides from Reis’ classes unearthed from ESTC’s archives. As we will see, all the essays present a clearly aesthetical approach to Reis’ works as filmmaker, poet and teacher, which makes it unprecedented: Maria Filomena Molder and Manuel Guerra’s essays are mainly focused on the film Jaime (1974); Nuno Júdice analyses António Reis’ main poetry book and José Bogalheiro explores the relation between Reis’ filming praxis and his propaedeutic approach.

One imagines composed music as originating in the mind of an author. Indeed, I have for the last six decades been composing music in this fashion. However, for the last five decades I have also been repeatedly attracted to various methods of deriving music from sources both inside and outside of music, viz. linguistic, acoustic, visual and mathematical as well as other works of music. For most of these operations I have resorted to strict algorithmic means and the use of computer programming. For instance the linguistic: I have used text orthography, spectral analyses of human speech, digital recordings of the human voice, and synthetic semantic structures. This paper is the most comprehensive text on my work in this field.

Using William Heise’s The Kiss, from 1896, as a starting point, I created an experimental essay film, also called The Kiss, to expose and question our conception of obscenity. Comparing both films and the resulting reception of their audiences, and the history of obscenity, I strive to provoke a reflection on how our conception of morality affect artistic creation in today’s internet culture.

Assuming we consider that the film art isn’t merely a simple representation or expression, but that promotes a moral understanding, we are considering that the film acts as a contributing means to understanding the philosophical aspect of human beings. It is through films that we have access to stories and characters that lead us to analyze the way we live. Based on this idea, comes this audiovisual essay "The Imperfect Sides of a Perfect Circle", that explores the way that these moral aspects are translated to films, more explicitly how it is done in the film How to Draw a Perfect Circle (2009), from the director Marco Martins.

In the three short films Cinema, The Keeper and Flow, the director Rodrigo Areias utilises the cinematographic medium to establish a seamless relation between character and environment. All three regard different themes, but share remarkable similarities in style, concept and visual language, pointing to the concise work of the director. This essay, Movement, Framework, Cut, explores some techniques of video editing to analyse exactly how Areias masters the filmic landscape, through the movement of characters and the framework of the shots. Cutting between the three short films, and cutting the shots themselves, allows for a new perspective on how the various elements of the films flow organically together.

This article intends to provide a holistic review of Thor Magnusson’s Sonic Writing, presenting the authors’ historically-informed views about sound and music technologies. It starts by addressing the distinctions between the three categories of music-related inscriptions, in material, symbolic and signal form. It then reflects upon the parallelism this categorization has with the scope and topics within different conferences from the field of sound and music technology. Furthermore, it recounts the contributions of recent deep learning approaches in musical development, expanding on the books’ notions and offering an updated view concerning the specific purpose of automated music generation. Moreover, a contrast between the recent wave of AI-related technological developments and older scientific advances is discussed. Finally, driven by considerations about computational creativity in the field of music stated on Sonic Writing, this review propels a reflection regarding the role of machines in artistic creation.

This text proposes to think about the process of choreographic creation in an educational context creating a dialogue between artistic and philosophical creation, reflecting, in this way, how creation asserts itself as a practice of artistic education. It establishes a plan of discussion starting from the philosophical creation of concepts, with Deleuze, to choreographic creation. This approach underlines the resistance as a common action that is expressed differently in the two domains. Resistance as a tool that allows to reflect on the creative act in its theoretical and empirical aspects and to establish a bridge with the educational context. Baldacchino is called as an author who allows to examine the mechanism of resistance that is established in the articulation between artistic education and the School. Finally, the text projects to a practical plan of the choreographic creation process, underlining the importance of collaboration and devising among the agents of creation.

Austrian artist and director of ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, Peter Weibel (Odessa, 1944), curates a book/catalogue of the mythical exhibition Sound Art, Sound as Medium of Art, that took place between March 2012 and February 2013 in Karlsruhe, with nearly one thousand images of sound art pieces. Along with a very detailed historical trace of sound as a form of art, the book contains different texts and essays about sound and its history written by renowned and iconic figures in art all articulated in five main sections. A very important work for any artist or amateur interested in sound and music.