This is the best I managed:

An English title for “Viagem” would be “Journey”.

Not only has this decontextualization existed since its inception, but it has also gradually increased as the genre has evolved. The first pornographic movies already showed the physical sexual relation devoid of any emotional context. While early movies always showed the actors’ whole bodies, later on, partial details started to be shown. More recently, the genre accepted the idea of getting rid of whole bodies, portraying only their parts, thus rendering the human body out of context. But even the representation of detailed body parts still invokes some organic resonance. By rotating a human sexual organ around an arbitrary fixed axis – an impossibility in human terms – this work gets rid of any trace of human plausibility.

The limits of perception are not fixed. They depend on several factors. A face, for instance, is more easily recognizable than a landscape because our brain is hardwired with a very keen face recognition algorithm that tries to match faces to whatever images surround us. Distance can also affect our perception of an image. Usually, the closer we are to our subject, the better we see it. This case is an exception, however: if you look at the screen from a certain distance, an image may be identified; but if you get closer, it is no longer there.

Note: given the nature of this work, if the image is still, it is not representative of the piece.

Technical description: Generative video (16:9 vertical), color, 19” LCD screen, variable duration

Fosfeno was shown in the following places:

• Nov 2011 – Ouvertures d’Ateliers – Marseille, France

As we grow up, we learn to recognize specific patterns and forms without giving them much thought. We apprehend them automatically. If, for some reason, we fail to recognize or decode one of these expected patterns and forms, our brain interrupts its automatism and switches to a more aware mode, thus applying a different degree of attention to the object that posed the challenge.

“Relógio” (which means “clock” in portuguese) tries to invoke this experience, being in all ways similar to an ordinary digital clock except that it always displays an impossible time. When we look at it, our brain will involuntarily and automatically try to decode it’s message as the current time. And in failing to do so, we must reconsider our relation with the object.

“Relógio” was shown in the following places:

• November 2010 – Geraldine – Lisboa, Portugal
• November 2010 – Atelier Concorde opening – Lisboa, Portugal
• November 2011 – Ouvertures d’Ateliers – Marseille, France

Projected video (DVD 4:3), b&w, sound, 9’ 32’’ (loop)

Taking CCTV footage of a maestro conducting an orchestra, the position of his baton on each frame was determined, indexed and stored digitally, effectively converting the original diachronic video clip into a database of directly accessible individual frames. Once enough frames were indexed to represent baton positions covering the whole space of possibilities, the process was inverted: specific frames were chosen based on the desired positions of the baton. Having decided it should travel through a circular path, a new frame sequence representing it was rendered again into a new video.

The sound, sampled from a classical symphony, followed a similar process. The original audio was divided into several small parts, which were classified, converted into a database and then rendered together in a different order based on a similar path – a circle.

This way, the maestro in the video is forced to describe circles with his baton while, in a similar circular fashion, the music is forced to become strong or calm, staccato or legato. The result reveals the artificiality of the process but also a new order in which one can almost believe.

Maestro was shown in the following places:

• May 2010 – SmallBox28 of Pavilhão 28 – Lisboa, Portugal
• Nov 2010 – Atelier Concorde – Lisboa, Portugal
• Nov 2011 – Ouvertures d’Ateliers – Marseille, France

I wish to thank Graham Hurman for giving me permission to use his image in my project.

Click it to enlarge:

This panoramic view of Lisboa without its bridge was not achieved by digitally removing it. Instead, photos were taken to the left and to the right of the bridge and then stiched together. The bridge was not photographed.

Please note that the above picture is just a preview. The real work is a panorama built out of five A3 prints in glossy photographic paper side by side partially overlapped.

The tile mosaic which inspired this project:

Developed in vvvv. An Arduino controller is used to capture data from a bend sensor which is attached to the screen, a 15″ TFT in portrait orientation.

Here are some pictures. Click to enlarge:

It started out as a video but ended up with 100 outdoor A2-sized poster which were placed around Bairro Alto, a neighborhood in Lisboa.

Being a school exercise I decided to publish its whole investigation process in a blog. Here’s the link.

Here are some pictures. Click to enlarge:

You can preview it here:

Here are the pictures which were published together with the text. Click to enlarge:

If you want to see more pictures my photo album from Kashmir is here.