Perspection is a series of audiovisual pieces by Matthew Biederman and Pierce Warnecke stemming from their interactive generative installation of the same title. By focusing on simple yet intense variations on a restricted colour palette, rhythm and frequency, the works play with perspective – creating a hyper-awareness of the act of perception. The visuals and sounds are built through generative and reactive real-time authoring systems; this creates a synchronicity, which allows for the emergence of a work which is 'other than the sum of its parts'.
The pieces in the collection focus on critical bands of perception, transitional 'grey zones' and points of fusion between extremities of different continuums: rhythm/pitch, static/dynamic or silence/noise. Sonically, the compositions borrow from visual moiré techniques: the most elemental electronic sounds (sine wave, white noise, impulse) are layered and displaced in time or frequency to create complex sonic tapestries that mirror the imagery.
By exploring the primacy of line vs colour and the paradox of screen space and screen surface, the work exploits the human perceptual system, and in doing so, asks questions of post-digital screen-based culture. Stemming from concepts of embodied perception (referring to Alva Noë’s book, Out of Our Heads), multistable imagery such as Louis Albert Necker’s cube and the pioneering work of Jan Evangelista Purkinje, the Perspection collection examines the connections between perception and the construction of Gestalt. The works navigate between synchronisation, extreme dynamics and static moments, building up and breaking down the dimensions and characteristics of light, sound, and colour.
Perspection has been performed at MUTEK, Montreal, 2016; CTM, Berlin, 2015; UH Festival, Budapest, 2015, NEMO Biennial, Paris, 2015; Rencontres Bandit-Images, Bourges, 2015; ELEKTRA, Montreal, 2015. Perspection has been installed as a multi-channel interactive generative installation at: MoveOn!, Halle, 2015; Tobcana001, Ljubljana, 2016, Currents New Media Festival Santa Fe, 2016; and FILE Festival, Sao Paulo, 2016.
