This project was originally planned as a complement for Carlos Bernal's bahelor's degree project: Flâneur. The idea was to produce an interactive piece to be implemented during the exposure of the work (by the way if you don't know Carlos works please give it a visit, it's amazing).

 

For accomplish that goal I decided to recycle some small projects developed in Processing, and then the idea of convert sound in images was incrusted in my head.

 

After some attempts Carlos decided to discard this idea but I decided to follow it in my own way. I used the project and evolved it for my class with Esteban Gutierrez, another great artist and amazing teacher.

 

The project captures the sound in an specific place and convert it to images in the screen of the computer (originally produced a series of sequential images, then a PDF file and finally a video). These images are directly affected for the environment.

 

Then I thought that was interesting but not enough, I usually enjoy loosing myself in the exploration of pathways more than in accomplish some specific goal, and Esteban let me do it (thank you so much for it).

 

I wanted to play with the capture of the image, then decided to employ a song as the background sound for the next steps in the exploration. The song is form the album: Street of Lhasa (Sublime frequencies) from Zhang Jian, year 2005. And here the idea of index is absolutely relevant.

 

The sound record is an index of a geographical and temporal space, as the photograph is also an index but in visual terms. The idea of alternate and transform indexes was so appealing.

 

My next step was to record the video directly from the processing program to a video file, at the same time capture it using the web cam and then repeat the process but scanning the screen of the computer and capturing it. A digital image captured by a digital device and transformed in a different but still similar type of media.

 

That was really interesting, more than the outcome, to think about the image in those terms.

 

Next step: Capture the images produced in the screen in color film (ISO 200, Fujifilm). Again the index is re-captured and transformed, is like an accumulation of layers of indexes. For me that is a perfect metaphor of the photographic act.

 

The analogical images latent in the film were developed and then scanned, another loop between the analogical and digital worlds, another melting of the index captured again and transformed in a new index based on the last one. Layer over layer.

 

The scanned film negatives were transformed to positive in the computer and then the distance between the analogical and the digital captures was wide.

 

Next step: Close the gap once again. The scan of the screen and the digital version of the film scanned were printed over acetate using a laser print and then used to make analogical photograms over black and white photographic paper (Kodak). Another loop and jump between the analogical and digital capture and reproduction of the image.

 

The final piece was a PDF document, a log of the process. During my talk about it, an engineer asked me what was the goal of it, and the answer was: Get lost in the process, walk the path and enjoy the travel.

 

And if you ask me what I've obtained of that journey I have to say that many of the concepts, ideas, tools, and questions developed, explored, discarded and even rejected in this project were in many ways the foundation to my bachelor's degree project.

I hope that you will find it interesting.