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VIOLETA LÓPEZ LÓPEZ

PHYSICS OF THE MENTAL

2024
Performance - Sound art
Ableton Live - Max MSP - TouchDesigner - Arduino - 3D print


“Physics of the Mental” delves into an exploration of the inner reality of words when they refer only to themselves, to their physicality related to sound, movement and light. Language singing its own prosody, objects pronouncing their own definition, the written world leaving its whispering trace, the body of words being touched and played. A glimpse into the parallels between physics and language and the intertwined behavior of particles and words. Language as score, instrument and performer at the same time.

The reserach develops as a performance organized in two movements with two parts each of them.


I. UNCERTAINTY

“Taking several copies of the same word in a given language, the measure of its certainty blurs like the waves, liquefying a quantum ambiguity that gives it the character of fire: a being that is an act.”

The study of prosody makes it possible to transcript words into music through the reinterpretation of melody and rhythm in speech and its translation to MIDI in Ableton Live. Words play the music hidden in their own definition using the voice of the thing they name creating a composition in which language becomes its own score. The soundscape is expanded to landscape with the 3D spectrograms of the sounds located in a virtual environment where the performer navigates playing an improvised walk.


II. SYNTHESIS AND FORCES

[Law without words]
The synthesis and interactions of words and sounds are explored first through an experimental instrument that allows to physically touch the sound (3D spectrograms printed, Arduino with LDRs to unleash spectral synthesis sounds in Max MSP when playing the instrument) and second, through sonification of RGB channesls using spectral synthesis.

II.I. On the physical body of sound and its synthesis through its elementary partials

For waves and fire

II.II. On the action and interaction of words and their virtual bodies

4 verses for
the word
the graphical representation of sound
the moving image
of waves and fire