Author: jb.joaobacelar

Videomapping – O Cante Acusmático de Pias (en-GB)

Integration of video mapping in “O Cante Acusmatico de Pias”
(The acousmatic singing of Pias”

“O Cante Acusmatico de Pias” is an album / concert published by group “Os Camponeses de Pias” Singing choral from Alentejo (World Cultural Heritage – UNESCO). The result is the inclusion of acousmatic sound by Feliciano de Mira, Vítor Ruas and António Duarte with a live recording recorded in Musibéria, in Serpa, 2016.

A proposal of Feliciano de Mira and “Os Camopneses de Pias”  to the Municipality of Évora to participate in Festival Artes à Rua (Évora, July to September 2018) resulted in a production for the opening of the festival and in the presentation on July 12, 2018 in Praça of the Sertório. The invitation was extended to a challenge to accomplish a digital scenography, video over the surrounding architectural space, the Church of Salvador, in the same square area.

We used the facade of the Church for video mapping and integrated Feliciano’s artistic and semiotic studies, along with library images. I mainly use free software such as Processing, Openframeworks, VPT, Inkscape, Blender, Gimp and images / video from cooperative artist sharing libraries such as Pixabay.com or Videvo.com.

In search of an organic expression performance, rather than technological, we decided to create the real-time graphic effects with image manipulation and plastic arts. We used materials from simple drawing to half pen like water, oils and other objects. We adapted a room of the Teatro Garcia de Resende provided by the Municipality and with the support of CENDREV we set up a studio where during 10 days we drew a script for the performance.

foto: Pedro Pinto
video mapping rehearshals Cante Acusmático de Pias – studio-room at Teatro Garcia de Resende | photo: Pedro Pinto
photo: Pedro Pinto
photo: Pedro Pinto

 

 

 

 

The planning:
Technical area study, creation of technical guides for equipment forecasting, budgeting and institutional formalities.

foto de ecrã em produção
rider técnico

 

 

 

 

 

A 10-piece piece is created, with 10 different projection scenarios related to each song.
The graphics resulted in an artistic reading about the presence of ecological concern in the cante alentejano texts. The acoustic intervention of António Duarte and Vitor Ruas evoke possible interpretations about the world’s today sonorities in contrast to the oral and artistic tradition.
This first show serves as a gauge to identify points to improve various aspects of the concert: Duration of scenes or performative rhythm, positioning of elements, lighting and sound.

I believe that with the clearness of the rhythm of visual arts intervention and a more intelligible logic in the acousmatic, the artistic possibilities can be cleared, above all, in the sense of making the event more fluid and continuously interesting for the public.

mapping video on the facade Igreja do Salvador, Vitor Ruas, at bottom right. Photo: Pedro Pinto
Essential support of Beatriz. Foto: Pedro Pinto

António Duarte, first plan | photo: Mauro Freira / Evora Noticias CME [FB]
photo: Mauro Freira / Evora Noticias CME [FB]

Production: Câmara Municipal de Évora
Thanks to the Diocese of Évora and Regional Directorate of Culture of the Alentejo
Presentation: Maria Marrafa
Audex Audio: Manuel Chambel – sound, Carlos Mavioso – light, support of Yoan Crochet,
Video projector: Luis Bombico

Évora, July 12, 2018

 

Video mapping device : Silver Waters

Creating a multimedia device:

After a challenge, a process of awareness.
A search for meanings that build emotional discourse.
From this light, from this perception or from this fantasy will come information.

Challenge: – Express the repercussion of the presence of water in the late medieval period in Évora.

The forming question: How do I perceive the medieval period?
A space-time that comes to us through works of art and documentation segmented by versions that portray almost only one-off issues.
Fragments of lives of distant generations. Fragments.

Water: Element, indispensable, atmosphere, work, mechanics, value, health, life. H2O: Three molecules.
Key values ​​that take me thinking to a force that unites everything, that brings and fixes beings. Cycle-relation. Cycle.

The process led me to imagine a device that could contain and convey this emotional information. It does not matter to me to describe more details of the creative process, because I do not even know how to concretize steps, but somehow the idea of ​​an optical illusion using glass or mirrors seemed to me potential because of the relation of texture to water.

I came to a storefront, where the sense of mystery prevails that the temporal distance from medieval times imposes on us.
The three molecules were an argument for finding three key elements of human existence: Perception (textures), consciousness (information), work (art).
Three video spheres.
The optical illusion created with a set of mirrors would be that of an supposed cistern’s interior, a room of masonry and humidity made with a walled wall image on a real scale. Photographed on a rainy day next to the aqueduct of the Água de Prata (Silver water).

The projection system was achieved with a short-throw video projector lens.
The video and sound are transmitted by a microcomputer (raspberry pi 3b) programmed to act as an uninterrupted player, which also served for the emission of the sound design created by me for the exhibition’s acoustics.

I share some images of the planning and construction process.

Top mirror

prisma of mirrors

Interior structural box with spheres and video projector

3D scaled reheasal plan

Interior

Interior measures

workshop

mirror assembly

video-mapping tunings

interior mirror’s setting

Many thanks to: Dr. Cármen Almeida (Head of the Town Hall’s Culture Division) for the challenge has driven me. A great opportunity to participate in the remarkable exhibition they’ve organized.
Thanks to the Architect Carlos Almeida, Mr. Joaquim Almeida da T.H of Évora.
Mr. João of Vidromor and Luís Farias from DacAdvertising. co.

* “O Aqueduto da Água de Prata e o Património Hidraulico em Évora”
* “The Aqueduct of the Silver Water and the Hydraulic Heritage in Évora”, Exhibition at the Convento dos Remédios, March to December of 2018.

 

 

biographical notes

I’ve soon expressed special interests in technology as a form of expression. As a teenager, I was offered an Intro to Basic course, in the same decade as home computers, Spectrum, Amiga, and successors were spreading around.

At the same time started to operate local broadcast stations freely. Studios full of young enthusiasts who were learning empirically to became journalists, broadcasters and technicians with the public support. In that enthusiastic effervescence: the guitar, the band, the Tuna (students music group) and the broadcasting occupied me all time and even so trying to graduate visual arts at high school.

In the time that I consider my activity,’s second phase in a professional regime, have dedicated myself to audiovisual technologies, the course of information treatment,
technical production in local radio and recording studios, musical composition fo the stage, theatre and studio projects. I became involved with the medium that developed along with the emergence of digital at a time when I was a full-time teacher in vocational education.

A third part begins in Lisbon, where I’ve worked for the NBP and Fealmar producers, mainly working in outdoor and studio for television fiction, a time that continues later on as a technician for stage arts with show companies and musical projects all over the country, as well in Canada, France, Spain and Brazil. The experience leads me to positions of technical coordination at music festivals, TV shows and technical support for installations and exhibitions.

The fourth phase of my work is defined by the return to the visual arts (although never completely out), completing the Degree in Digital Arts – Multimedia which helps me to expand my plastic creation capacities, now immense in the digital world, where the medias are merged into new forms of expression through electronic incorporation , interactivity and generative computing, an evolution that continues to thrill.
I am currently (2021) completing my Masters in Praticas Artisticas (Artistic Practices) in Visual Arts at the University of Évora where I am studying and testing new multimedia approaches to historical heritage.

This site is mainly a compendium and graphical diary of my creative activity. Notes about devices, tests and productions that I’ve been doing.

pessoa

Não basta abrir a janela
Para ver os campos e o rio.
Não é bastante não ser cego
Para ver as árvores e as flores.
É preciso também não ter filosofia nenhuma
Com filosofia não há árvores: há ideias apenas.
Há só cada um de nós, como uma cave.
Há só uma janela fechada, e todo o mundo lá fora;
E um sonho do que se poderia ver se a janela se abrisse,
Que nunca é o que se vê quando se abre a janela

Alberto Caeiro
Fernando pessoa