In a world of uncertainty, transitioning between different interpretations is not only key to survival, but also a creative act. Shifting is an audiovisual experience that inspires new ways to perceive the connections between sounds and images. Digital and site-specific installations augment the ambiguity of everyday sounds by re-signifying them through dynamic visual representations. Sounds create a mental image, and when Shifting gives sounds an image, the brain brings these together in a very unfamiliar way, invoking transformative moments of cognitive dissonance boosting our power to create new associations.

Shifting-S

The site-specific installation Shifting-S featured in the event Shifting to the Forest, a sensorial space, where images and sounds created specific sensory effects, unexpected volumes, rhythms and poetic evocations. A collaborative effort to bring video and performance works out in the marshes for a night under the willow trees. ((all sounds recorded on-site))

Shifting – Design Thesis Film

The ideas behind Shifting. Augmenting environmental ambiguity through inspiring sensory interactions.

Shifting – Displacing

Shifting-Displacing is an audiovisual experiment, part of the Shifting series. A site-specific installation, it incorporates and translates sonic and visual elements from a secret garden in East London. Sounds captured on site are transformed and their causal relations ambiguously shifted. That sonic drift together with a physical presence interceding amongst the visuals transports the observer to different places.

Researcher: Bernardo Varela Supervisors: Paul Bavister, Felix Faire, Luca Dellatorre // Thanks to: Helena Lukowiecki, Tati Batalha // Hardware: Custom Parabolic Microphones, Custom Binaural Microphones, Surround sound system // Software: Ableton Live, Touchdesigner, Adobe Premiere.

Shifting – High-Pass

Shifting-High-Pass

This experiment plays with the idea of how we can perceive the same sound differently
depending on the context and on our current and ever changing priorities and interests.

The sounds recorded for this experiment reveals that depending on where our attention is focusing at a given moment, cars on a Highway ( busy sounds) can sound like waves breaking on the beach (calming sounds) or leaves been smashed by a bicycle can sound like boiling water. Depending on the context, the same sonic components can mean completely different things.

Sound recordings of cars on a Highway in East London near UCL (Here East).
After editing and filtering the sounds, the similarity between the sounds of cars and ocean became more explicit. Also sound recordings of bicycle running over dry leaves. After editing and filtering the sounds became similar to boiling water.

During the editing, a High-Pass filter was used to cancel the low frequencies of sounds.
By modulating the low frequencies of the recorded sounds of cars on a Highway, the sonic similarities between a busy road and waves breaking on a beach were enhanced.

The edited audio was analysed in Touchdesigner to generate the procedural animation
of the rectangles (road stripes and waves particles) reacting in real time with the different sound frequencies. Also keyframe animation in TD to add camera movement and to enhance particles flow and adding more drama and narrative to key moments.

Touchdesigner  CHOPto operator converts audio analyses data into image.
(a row of pixels with color values animated at 60 frames per seconds. The sound frequencies are spread horizontally from left to right, low to high). The TOP feedback combined with other effects creates a representation of the audio spectrum rendered as a moving image in real time.

Researcher: Bernardo Varela
Supervisors: Paul Bavister, Felix Faire, Luca Dellatorre
Thanks (TD tutorials): Simon Alexander-Adams, Hristo Velev
Software: Ableton Live, Adobe Audition, Touchdesigner
Hardware: Binaural Microphones (Sennheiser Ambeo smart headset), Iphone, Surface Book 2

Shifting-Hovering

Shifting-Hovering – 360VR – Ambisonics audio content. (headphones highly recommended).

Shifting-Seeking

Seeking is another experiment of Shifting, an ongoing research about transitional states of perception, part of my MA at UCL (MArch Design for Performance and Interaction). On this short film we follow geometric elements seeking entrance to a parallel world where they might belong to. This is a speculative design project that aims to visualize how the concept of transitional states of perception could be explored in a VR environment.

Researcher: Bernardo Varela
Supervisors: Paul Bavister, Felix Faire, Luca Dellatorre
Audio: Friday@Unit15 – The Loose Association of Cinema and Sound