’Prototipo

Exploding with saturated light, colour, movement and synaesthetic sound, ’Prototipo is a perception shifting audiovisual work based on two live recordings by General Magic ∞ Tina Frank in 2022 in Vienna and London. 

Having pioneered advanced relationships between audio and visual at the dawn of the digital age this collaborative project resurrected itself in 2022 manifesting around a theme of ‘post-digital electronica’. Building on the history of audio visual experiments ’Prototipo eschews the earnestness of many of these forms to concoct a playful post avant garde, post video game, post rave unfurling wildly as a post digital delight.

As a reflection of the relentless visual and sonic landscape of our times ’Prototipo also acts as a harbinger of absurdity with a nod to ’Pataphysics, or the ‘science of imaginary solutions’, as invented by French writer Alfred Jarry. Without form or definition this relentless flow of stuttering information is designed to overwhelm the audience with its abundance of hyperactive visuals meshed amongst a flickering visual component.

The audio in ’Prototipo is one signifier to a post digital world where the unmistakable sound of ‘real’ drums are teased amongst itchy electronic debris resulting in accelerationist sonic forms. On the visual side an analogue modular video synthesizer is deployed as a split screen of pattern misbehaviour. 

Packed with carefully crafted sonic and visual manoeuvres ’Prototipo comes with an explicit noise & flicker warning. This is an anti stasis argument where things may not be what they seem as the senses are confronted with a barrage of information tricking the brain into patterns and behaviour which are suggestive only. One starts wondering whether it really is seeing things the way they were intended, or if it is already seeing things that are not here. (Mark Harwood)