Campos | Temporales was developed as a large scale architectural video installation for 150 Media Stream, a curated video exhibition space in the lobby of 150 Riverside Plaza in Chicago. A musical composition by Christopher Walczak was presented on opening night. An ambient electronic sound track by Walczak accompanies the installation, which runs through December 2022. The opening night performance ensemble included Eric Mandat, clarinet; Emily Rach Beisel, saxophone; Jason Roebke, bass; Chris Butler, percussion; Christopher Walczak, electronic sound; with Richard Kelley conducting.
The animation for the installation involves transforming audio signals into pixel values and writing them to a space-filling curve, typically a Hilbert Curve. The curve visits every pixel in an image in a symmetrical labyrinthine pattern. The regular patterns of waves in the one-dimensional audio signal form two-dimensional patterns in the resulting image. The patterns are animated by cyclic changes in phase, color and amplitude, resulting shimmering illusions of motion, swirling pixels, flowing colors, and coalescing and dispersing of abstract images, at various overlapping scales and speeds.
In the spirit of intermedia, the animation and the musical composition share algorithmic processes and data structures, both historical and contemporary. The large scale time structure of music and animation was a classic ABACABA Rondo, with visual and musical thematic material developed within the rondo form. Smaller scale time divisions and rhythms were derived from recursive processes. Time structures were translated into visual structures, as when a rhythm becomes a pattern, and patterns sometimes were translated into sound, as when the same frequency signal is used in both image and music.
This project builds upon earlier intermedia collaborations between composer Stephen Dembski and Paul Hertz. Stephen died in August 2021. As a student and frequent musical collaborator of Dembski, Christopher Walczak was ideally suited to continue the project. Chris based his composition on Stephen's theories of expanded tonalities. A version of Campos | Temporales formatted for UHD display, with music recorded at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, will be released in early 2023.
A note on the title: Fields under cultivation are referred to as “campos”, but the word can also refer to open countryside or to mathematical structures. As an adjective, the Spanish word “temporal” can mean “temporary” or “related to time” or it can be used as a noun to refer to a storm, typically one that lasts for some substantial time.