Telcosystems

In TESTFILM #1 they explore the creative possibilities of the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) – the new global infrastructure for film projection in cinemas. By 2015, this digital standard had completely replaced analogue film projection around the world. Could one upset the default behavior of the DCP system and unearth its artistic potential? (A practice that has been an integral part of the history of cinema.) Or is the system designed to exclude any possibility of human intervention? If so, what happens to the history and the future of experimental cinema and the renegades who refuse to play by the rules?

Deorbit, the first collaboration between Makino Takashi and Telcosystems, takes viewers on a voyage from the immeasurable depths of space, visible only as pixels, to micro-space, the celluloid grain itself.

As physicists are closing in on the particle described as the fundamental building block in our understanding of the Universe, Telcosystems show a far less conclusive particle theory; one that describes a digital world that is unstable and multimodal by nature, only revealing itself through bits and pieces traveling at superluminal velocity. At these speeds even the slightest fluctuation or disturbance unleashes a cascade of shapeshifting sono-optical movements, constantly challenging and redefining the rules by which this pattern-defying universe is pulled from stasis into turbulent chaos.

Part of the Optofonica #1 series

Instead of creating mere objects of aesthetic seduction, a new form of art is surfacing that invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception. It seeks to shift the observer’s attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself.

Semaphore is a cinematographic installation that emphasizes a subdued and meditative state by submerging the audience in a world of pulsating and shifting shapes. The work is created from two basic compositional premises; pulse and feedback. The backbone of the composition is a stream of visual and sonic pulses, leaving its intervals to be explored and brought to life by a feedback generating a network, consisting of envelopes, gates, compressors, and masks. The intertwining layers provide the experience of an elaborate audiovisual time-space-continuum. Running almost entirely without input from the outside world, the system becomes a magnifier of its own rudimentary functions and algorithms.

Mortals Electric is a vivacious interaction between a multi-layered, abstract spatial graphics and besieging audibility, inspired by a sharp, restrained and lucid aestheticism closely related to the utilised technology. Layers of strobing organic structures, deep machinic drones and waves of digital noise introduce a powerful provocation to the limits of human sensory apparatus, opening an unusual 360° spatiality to the new forms, which definitely presents a challenge to the acquired cinematic experience.

LOUDTHINGS is an audiovisual account of an expedition into the innards of the computer. Using a set of elementary instructions such as modulation, masking, and feedback, Telcosystems programmed a self-organizing network of algorithmic processes for the creation of spatial image and sound. The result is a non-referential world which strains the senses; an exploration along the borders of human perception, through worlds of multiplying and mushrooming clouds of light and sound, through worlds of mesmerizing spatiality and interferring landscapes.

Meta_Epics is an abstract audiovisual story in four parts, generated and composed in real-time by two computers, without human mediation and without the use of the pre-recorded material. The generated visuals and sounds are presented on a widescreen projection and a 5.1 surround speaker system in a pitch dark space. Non-referential shapes and sounds with a clear and austere aesthetic are the starting point for the composition, which bases its rhythm and development on the actual date and time.

Telcosystems investigates the relationship between programmed numeric logic and a translation of it to the physical world, looking for an individual narrative in the world of abstract spatial image and sound. Crosslinx has a clear and sober aestheticism that is closely related to the computer technology used to generate it.