WHAT
This project is a work in progress made with the most interesting fragments I accidentally come across in my audiovisual practice -playing with video, motion graphics and shaders- and in my creative work preparing visuals for live shows and sonovisual projects.
Each and every one of these video fragments comes with a short text in which I briefly discuss the motive behind each piece —personal, banal, metaphysical or mere hypes of the Zeitgeist— to give them contextual depth and thematic coordinates.
Due to its open-ended nature, Draft Visuals is a journal in which I show my progress in experimenting with the generation of visuals, as well as my thoughts on everything and nothing in particular. I advise you to enjoy it as I do: with no other expectations than to let yourself be found by image and thought in a poetic and unfiltered fashion.
HOW
There is just one rule for this project : the only editing allowed is limited to the design of an intro (to display each fragment's title) and a coda (to add visual and music credits at each fragment's ending).
The softwares used in the creation of this project are:
GL Mixer as the creative software used to generate the visuals in each fragment, usually made up of nothing but shaders (GLSL assets), sometimes in combination with videos.
Adobe Premiere Pro as the edition software used to design both the intro and coda in each fragment.
VISUALS
#05 SOMMEIL
Digital assets (video + glsl code snippets) used in live shows, teaming up with Chromatique Light Show
"We are weightless, electric shadows
ecstatically dancing in a wet summer's dream,
celebrating this moment here and now,
alive. Amongst tall trees."
These lines that I wrote nearly a year ago about my experience at a secret festival also summarise and anticipated, without knowing it (perhaps because everything ever taking place has already happened before in the past), what my year 2024 would be like up to this point: so many places, moments and people that I did intensely love and from whom, in the midst of our happiness or shared ecstasy, I was already bidding farewell, knowing that both they and I cannot escape our condition: to be passing birds which cannot - and do not want to - live like you do.
Wherever you go on the map, if you ever think of me, I hope I can feel it, so it can help me change the lyrics to this song. Meanwhile, as someone said once, we'll have to kill our darlings, forget romantic languages. Erode the melody.
Let's keep dancing through the night, towards where fate, desire and chance may guide us. Hopefully, to meet again one day and celebrate that, for a moment (there and then, in the future), we're still here together, enjoying ourselves and laughing at the city as it goes bankrupt with everyone going nuts inside, while we open way to our next destination. This time, sharing a one-way ticket. Bang !
#04 RESOLUTION
Digital assets (video + glsl code snippets) used in Cante Jondo Modulado, a live show with Matías López "El Mati" and Caradusanto
The resolution of an image is the measure of its memory in the present as well as the quality of its projection into the future. The exact size and weight of a ghost.
However, the destruction / construction of narratives are a breaking point with respect to the feelings and basic needs of individuals VS the projections of capital.
Because beyond technique —and regarding the meaning of any image— objectivity does not exist: that "truth", with respect to what an image is and the part that it plays in a narrative, is a relational construction that is not given, but rather made from practices in the physical and real world, whether from neighbourhood and cultural associationism or from the touristification and privatisation of public common spaces — that is, spaces supported by every common citizen, but sequestered for the enjoyment of those who can pay for that privatising extraction from the commons.
The re-signification of what Andalusia and being Andalusian are —whether as a cliché or from the perspective of the Andalusian neo-right in particular and neo-liberalism in general— is a task that is not carried out from the private benefit oriented phantasmagoria of social networks. It is a continuous work done in the here and now within the physical space.
To do is to destroy the abstraction shattering our present in this moment —which is, minute by minute, continuously the future. On your side is to be with grassroots citizens' associations or with the hospitality and catering unions. Or, even worse, with the political parties (PP, Vox) traditionally related to the repression and ridiculisation of the Andalusian character, narratives and heritage.
#03 LANGUAGE
Digital assets (video + glsl code snippets) used in live shows and impros putting visuals to Teslaradio's sound and noise
... Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer.
Patterns of confusion. Living sediments (which came, perhaps, from outer space) undergoing a process of continuous transformation. A colonisation or simple (re)definition of both the objective and the subjective space that we create and inhabit, in our perpetual trail of destruction and starting over again. Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer...
#02 NOISE
Digital assets (video + glsl code snippets) used in live shows and impros putting visuals to Teslaradio's sound and noise
The audiovisual universe around us can be summed up in one word: noise
It is the disordered minimal element that defines its nature and it's increasingly present in its construction: from the 3D image and video rendering engines, to the diffusion models on which every AI software which generates audio, video, rasters or texts is based.
Hypnosis, confusion, creation: whoever modulates noise, models the real and can control reality.
#01 SKYE
Freestyle experimentation with digital assets (video + glsl code snippets) never used live before
Just as on that trip to the Isle of Skye where I wasn't with you and the rest of the gang (Antonio, Aida, Marina, Shelaine...), you won't be here to see how I progress with visuals either.
You, who were the one who convinced me (that night in 2015 in Las Camborias, in one of your many surprise visits from Scotland) that I had to learn motion graphics once and for all because "it's just a matter of rhythm, just like playing music".
Names are more than that: they are passwords, code words which summon a fire that we pass from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth; the prelude to the embrace in which we hold each other tight when meeting again. Names are the first thing we get when we arrive and the last thing that will remain of us.
This is why, in a lovingly act of rebellion against the echoes of your absence —so that your flame does not go out—, the first piece in this series is dedicated to you, Soraya Elisabeth Pérez Bradley, always on your own, (here today, tomorrow there), constantly taking pictures, recording videos and singing a cheerful tune anytime that happiness stroked you. May the birds always take you as one of them, in an endless summer with no end.
CREDITS
VISUALS*
Visuals made by PrRmB! relying on original motion graphics assets and code snippets from the Shadertoy Community with a special mention (and a big Thank you!) to creative contributors:
Asynth | Jarble
—
Credits to #04 Resolution _ Panda Baños del Carmen en La Ermita Verdiales. Direction, recording, edition Miguel Enfoka. 2011
Remixed 1930s Málaga footage _ Málaga 1930. Direction, recording, edition Laan, Dick. 1929-1930. Film restored by the Beeld en Geluid Foundation (Netherlands)
MUSIC*
#05 Sommeil _ Wand Broken Candle (excertp)
#04 Resolution _ Lagartija Nick Cielo Ulterior (excertp)
#03 Language _ Shadowax A & B (excertp)
#02 Noise _ Ishome Live @ Eastern Electronics Festival (excertp)
#01 Skye _ Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra The Universe Before Matter (excertp)
* In spite of having been cut, edited, modified, loosely translated and remixed, all sources (sounds, tunes, code snippets, pictures and videos) appearing in this piece have been used with the utmost respect - despite the will to create something completely new upon them.
PrRmB! (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 EN)
