Their project has as its central axis the geological concept of permafrost, a layer of the earth whose temperature is always at the freezing point of water, or below it. In this project, freezing is a conceptual way to “hold” matter in time.
In this installation, several blocks of frozen earth hang from the ceiling of the room. The fragments continually fall onto a sensitive membrane connected to software that interprets the impact, time, weight and displacement of the pieces of earth that fall away, creating a sound piece in real time. The installation confronts the times of natural and geological processes with the speed and acceleration of digital technology. The sound occurs at the moment the two meet and continues until the blocks of organic matter have finished thawing. As time progresses, matter accumulates on the platform generating not only a sculptural arrangement, but unpredictable reactions in the software and an ongoing percussive composition that is understood as the fruit of a confluence between an analog and a digital system.
Permafrostproposes an organic landscape that plays with time, an unstable geography that goes from the observation of the natural landscape, to the realms of real-time data and organic and sound manipulation. Notions of movement, instability, memory, decay, chance and contamination that can only be visited during the time that the thawing process of the blocks of land lasts.
Permafrosthas been selected in the II call for residencies of the European Network of Contemporary Audiovisual Creation (ENCAC), led by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial with the collaboration of the LEV Festival as a strategic partner. More than 180 projects from 34 countries were submitted to the call.
The European Network of Contemporary Audiovisual Creation aims to promote innovation through the sum of the knowledge, experience and resources of its members. The different nature of the partners also adds an interdisciplinary and complementary vision. Their contribution to the creators’ process, in the different areas that will be addressed in the project – research, production, education and dissemination of new audiovisual practices – will promote more effective progress in the implementation of innovative solutions that are exportable, sustainable and that bring new audiovisual culture to the general public and the industry.
Led by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Spain), with the collaboration of the LEV Festival (Visual Electronics Laboratory) as a strategic partner, ENCAC is co-financed by the Creative Europe program, and integrated by five European cultural institutions or platforms: Ars electronica (Austria), Disk (Germany), Resonate (Serbia), Le lieu unique (France) and hTh-CDN (France). Four other non-European collaborating partners are also part of the Network: Avatar (Canada), ELEKTRA (Canada), Mutek (Mexico) and Mapping Festival (Switzerland).
