Fragmented & Subjective Reality

The Process

The movement of the two flies is translated into signal by simultaneous video recording from two different angles, obtaining the X;Y;Z data that allowed me to record the movement and use the information to control the sound of the flies in the project. The captured images are transmitted to Max from a patch created on Touchdesigner.

The signal is transmitted to Max for Live, where the Touchdesigner signal is scaled to the "X" "Y" "Z" parameters of the "Envelop" tool
According to its movements, the accompaniment score varies, following a "story" that is told through the different moments of the electronic composition, divided into four acts where - we find chaos at the first place of the acts. I decided on purpose to give the first place to this atmosphere, because, as Nietzsche suggests, in antithesis to the search for order we find the fascination of chaos, primordial weapon of destruction and reconstruction, that phase in which rationality has not yet entered the room and the irrational world reigns supreme. Immediately afterwards follows a more sentimental phase, where the chords of the instrument give an order that could be melancholic and/or nostalgic but at the same time arouse suspense in the audience. For the realization of these psycho-acoustic effects I decided to delineate the dichotomy between melody and kick/bass, developing their writing on two different paths, the first the melodic one where the harmony of the arpeggio allows you to “travel” and the second where the rhythmic of the kick/bass keeps your attention high, as in a suspenseful scene. So we get to the third part, where we find, instead of an epic explosion, a phase where everything slows down and takes a turn that for some might be dark and anxious. The purpose of this is just to try to create an expectation in the listener that pushes him to think how the track could evolve, when instead, it takes a completely different turn. The third act tries to express anxiety and fear, I tried to create an atmosphere that could provoke suspense for the last act. And so here is the last act, in which we find a strong dichotomy between an agitated state and a calm state, both are necessary to compose a complete image of the work, but in each of us one of the two, in a totally subjective way, overpowers the other, because of the effect that the previous acts, and our previous experiences have had on our final perception. This dichotomy tries to explain in synthesis the total concept of the project, that is, that each subject perceives and interprets the reality that surrounds him in a completely different way from the subjects who experience the same things.

Technical Part

The project is based on a multispeaker installation using a Octophonic 2D system. The project requires a PC with Ableton Live 11 installed and the Max device "Envelop". The installation comes with an Ableton project on which there will be five tracks, two for the flies in which there will be "Source Panner'' and one for the composition whose outputs are directed to the eight outputs. In one of the return tracks there is the "Masterbus' ' which controls the output routing of the speakers: which must be set by assigning for the audio outputs relative to the number of speakers in their position indicated in the picture on the right.

The setup required is a multichannel system
consisting of 8 speakers positioned at a distance
of one meter from each other, a sound card with eight separate outputs, a laptop with the Ableton Live 11 program and the Envelop tool.
This installation requires a room with a total space of 8 x 5 square meters, divided into a performance area (5 x 5 sm) and a pc and sound card application area (1 x 2 sm).

The Concept

“Psychologists have failed to realise that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself. This is due partly to the fact that the faculty has been limited to reproduction, partly to the belief that senses not only supply impressions but also combine them so as to generate images of objects. For that purpose something more than mere receptivity of the senses is undoubtedly required, namely, a function for the synthesis of them.” Kant - Critique of Pure Reason.

As a support to the concept I did some research based on the perception of reality in the philosophical field, where I found important theses such as those of Immanuel Kant expressed in "The Critique of Pure Reason" where the philosopher exposes his theory that includes three steps in the identification of an object or concept through our senses, intellect and reason. “The role of imagination in perception” Michael Pendlebury (Department of Philosophy, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa) “Emotions and Decision Making” Jennifer S.Lerner, Ye Li, Piercarlo Valdesolo and Karim S. Kassam

How do we experience the "real"? What are the determining factors that condition the world and allow us to perceive it in ever different versions?
Over the years, many writers, poets, philosophers and intellectuals of all kinds have theorized and tried to explain scientifically how the human being can perceive the reality that surrounds

him. Among these we can find studies dedicated to the field of emotions, where we find interesting theories that tell how two major groups of emotions push us to make decisions and make an idea about a topic more than another. Based on Feldman Barrett's research on the "granularity" of emotions, it can be delineated from the graph of his theory that there would be a great many types of emotions outlining four basic poles, including arousal/tiredness and pleasant/unpleasant. Emotions could be divided into two major categories, pleasant and unpleasant emotions. They are most noticeable when they arise within us, as they can change our thoughts and consequently our state of mind. Can the onset of emotions be controlled? Many would say yes, just as many others would say that precisely because they are emotions they cannot be controlled since they come to us as a result of external experiences. Memories are a vehicle for recreating emotions, just like traumas, these two "modes of thought" lead us to live again certain emotions depending on the dynamics of the situation we are experiencing, and it does not necessarily have to be the same from which the first time a certain emotion was triggered. Emotions and imagination are two tools that our unconscious uses to make sense of the flow of life that we live every day.
If we weren't able to do this, we probably wouldn't be able to distinguish between the dynamics of a situation we don't like and one in which we are comfortable. Humans experience the world around them by interpreting it and making it their own.
Imagination plays a key role in the interpretation of reality but especially in its perception, as this can distort the reality around us.
Reality may not be one and the same and certainly, if it were, it would not be absolute, as everyone through their own sensitive experiences creates their own personal, subjective version.
Psychoacoustics explains how music, through chords and modes, stimulates certain emotions in most people who have experienced this, or to those who have not had direct experience but have assimilated it from other individuals or through study and research.
But then what is true? Our emotions are what is truest in us, and we are free to make them private as well as public. The outside world, if we can say so, is a great theater where man develops more and more complex and complete emotions, pushing him to define and label them, giving himself the opportunity to expand his range of understanding about a deeper knowledge of the experiences and situations that the flow of life offers us.
Many say that solitude is necessary for man, so that he can reorder his thoughts (not receiving new impulses from outside) and can categorize them giving them a sense, which at least for himself, is beneficial. The flies in the installation, which were raised and monitored by me personally for about three months, to my eyes displayed human emotions, such as depression and feelings of isolation. Once a second fly was inserted into the display case, in my imagination, the two would play and have fun, only to fight, confront, clash, and isolate themselves. In the moments when they were repelling and isolating themselves in different parts of the shrine, I thought they were thinking, meditating or who knows, maybe they were complaining! I wondered if the flies could really feel certain emotions, very human, or that it was all my own film, all the "dance" that was the result of my imagination, of human imagination. In this film created by sensitive experience, imagination, and reason that rationalized and concretized thought. Is that so?