Latent Spaces (2021)
About
Program notes
For a long time, artists have attempted to capture data relationships from the world that surrounds us and place them in aesthetic discourse. Latent Spaces is an audiovisual piece that converges with this significant body of work as much as it diverts from it. Instead of using data in a way to reflect the physical world, it deals with data as an autonomous observable object. In this context, the question “what does data represent” becomes irrelevant. The focus is shifted to the hidden spaces data can exhibit. Seeking to explore these spaces, the work uses visualization and sonification techniques of algorithmic processes. It hopes to discuss aesthetics not in terms of data sources but in terms of data dynamics.
Technical description
Latent Spaces is a collection of four autonomous etudes: Connectedness, Coalescence, Ecosystematicity and Entirety. Each etude presents the algorithmic process of t-SNE, a dimensionality reduction and data clustering algorithm. The algorithm receives multidimensional datapoints (containing more than three values) and compresses them into two or three dimensions, in order to make them accessible through visualisation. During this process, the algorithm tries to maintain the original data structure by clustering together the datapoints that present similarity. In each etude, we observe the evolution of the clustering process in three-dimensional space through iterations. Each etude is the product of a varying degree of data audiovisualisation and freely composed material. Through the implementation of various parameter mapping sonification techniques, the algorithmic process is explored as a source of expressive control while the combination of sound and image forms diegetic relations that render the unfolding of the process the main narrative mechanism.
Format: Fixed media audiovisual
Duration: 11:47
See full work on Vimeo:
Performances/Exhibitions
17/04/2021 - Manchester Theater in Sound Festival, broadcasted online
14/07/2021 - 9th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X 2021, broadcasted online