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Synthetic Spectrograms
Lo Pati, Amposta. November 2023
"Espectres” is a generative visual music installation. Driven by chance and probability, this audiovisual automata creates endless spectrograms in constant flux, which are transformed into electronic sound through image sonification algorithms and additive synthesis, and which will never be repeated exactly again.
Espectres enables, literally, to hear exactly what you see by using pixels as the source of sound generation. As an unattended and autonomous creative agent, it has a musical taste of its own. From drone ambients to raging rhythms or abstract microtonal landscapes, this algorithmic being fluctuates between unique and unexpected audiovisual states.
Espectres is part of a broader line of Playmodes research around image sonification. This research has given rise to multiple projects that explore the idea of drawing as a score: from collaborations with contemporary music ensembles—who must interpret graphic symbols as the basis of the music—to automated pianos or pipe organs driven by graphic scores. In all these projects, artists not only conceptualize and execute the formal structures of the artwork, but also develop the software tools that make them possible. Code becomes the brush and pigment of the piece, turning engineering into yet another creative process.
You can check a paper going into details of this works and other related projects:
FORMS (PDF)
Espectres has been displayed at:
-Display, UJI Castelló, 2021.
-CosmoNits, CosmoCaixa Barcelona 2022.
-Inund'Art, Girona, 2022.
-ISEA Barcelona, 2022.
-LoPati, Amposta, 2023.
-Sonar+D Istanbul, 2023.
-NXT Museum, Amsterdam, 2023.
-MadArts Museum, Miami, 2024.
-Can Framis, Barcelona, 2025.
-Grand Palais Immersif, 2025.
-DigitalRain Saint Petersburg, 2025.
-Mira.mov, Ideal Barcelona, 2025.
-Confluence at The Cube, Istanbul, 2025.