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Somnifacient Signals was first created at a distance between Montreal and France during the 2020 confinement, and premiered as a single screen stream at Gray Area Foundation in San Francisco. It was subsequently made available as a collection of video works from Sedition online digital art platform. During confinement, social society retreated inward while simultaneously using the internet as a way to remain connected to one another, learn, work, and even ‘travel’. We thought it was important to reflect on these ideas by using freely accessible live camera feeds from around the world and their connected chat rooms through sampling, video collage, field recording and plunderphonics. These techniques, used within a networked interface, addresses our reduced mobility through a single screen, two speakers and an internet connection to explore the world. By exploiting the real-time of the internet, the sources themselves present multiple possible real-time collaborators to respond to in the performance.

In the context of reduced mobility forced by the current pandemic – but also, on a larger scale related to climate change and ecological mindfulness, it is increasingly important that networked artistic performances become an essential component of future festivals and venues. Somnifacient Signals (Live Stream Version) is a networked performative piece which captivates and connects with audiences remotely as much as a shared physical performance does. How can an immersive audiovisual performance, with multiple screens, a specific stage layout and live performances by the artists, be transformed into a virtual networked orientation while still connecting with audiences? The Somnifacient Signals performance explores this question through a truly networked performance which not only expresses the final sonic and visual result, but also transcribes the interaction between performers, source material and audience through interactive feedback.

The live stream performance focuses on transformation (via destructive real time manipulation) of common prosaic sources using noise, moshing, feedback, extensive compositing / overlaying, saturation and glitch to transform the bland material into an intense and epileptic take on experiencing a mediated world via the internet. The promise of the internet as a place to connect is flooded with ads, glitches and trolls combining to make the internet not a democratic utopia, but instead a place fraught with dangers, misinformation and poor connections, while many CEOs continue to increase their wealth through their exploitation of the medium. Some of the sources we use include trains, city centers, wildlife reserves, chat rooms, internet browsing, beaches, cats in rescue shelters, desktop screens, zoom group calls, etc., reflecting the virtual spaces and mediated places which became one of the only shared common experiences accessible to us during the recent confinement situation.

By using sources culled directly from real-time streams, and allowing for audience members to influence which streams get utilized, the work not only is available on the network, but becomes the network in a sense. Somnifacient Signals (Live Stream) shares with the audience, as generously as possible, all of the elements necessary for an AV performance: sources, processing, communication between performers, graphics, data transmission (control signals), and live cameras in each performer's studio.

The performance can exist as multiple contexts: A fully »traditional« AV performance, with both performers present with the audience, partially networked with one of the performers in a shared physical space with the audience and the other performer at a distance, or entirely streamed with the performers not in the physical space of the audience. The fully streamed version will generate 3 physical spaces: performer 1’s location in Montreal, performer 2’s location in Europe, and the final festival venue space with an audience present. There will also be 3 screen spaces: a central final result of processed video, 2 side spaces to the left and right of the main screen (used for the performers’ local camera, chat windows, network and control performance data, etc) and at the front of the stage below the 3 video projections, 6 LCD screens aligned to create a horizontal menu will display all of the available video sources. This can be seen as a kind of visual radio dial, with multiple stations / channels co-existing in real time, with a scanning component between sources that the visual performer will operate.

The public, either in the physical space, or from online can select from these or suggest through a chat interface any other live streams. Multiple screen layouts, or »virtual stage scenographies« can be prepared, and displayed on this 9-screen layout in an improvised way: in this sense the screen space becomes an instrument itself which the artists can play.

ΔΤ with Matthew Biederman

Collaboration with Keith Fullerton Whitman

SEDIMENTS with Clément Edouard

SINN + FORM with Frank Bretschneider

Somnifacient Signals with Matthew Biederman