Zakoreninjeno v kodi
Zakoreninjeno v kodi (Rooted in code), Author: Nejc Trampuž, Sound design and music: Tim Kropivšek, voice: Blaž Šef
a short experimental animated film, created with the assistance of artificial intelligence
The film takes place in the year 2057. In a polluted city, a permaculture garden flourishes on the roof of a skyscraper, tended by a robot gardener and an elderly botanist. Appealing to all ages, the film speculates on the degraded state of the environment, nature, and the ecosystem in the future, but at the same time presents a utopian solarpunk vision and solutions to the environmental crisis. It also brings into the equation a question of the impact artificial intelligence will have on our society, our daily lives, and our environment.
When animating, the filmmaker Nejc Trampuž explored the capabilities of the rapidly evolving tools of generative artificial intelligence. Those are shaking up the social and artistic realms and entering the field of film production and gaming. The AI tools were used to generate elements of animation and sound, as well as to write the story, script, and visual design of characters and scenes. Nejc Trampuž worked with artist and sound designer Tim Kropivšek to create the audio while Blaž Šef, an actor and interpreter, provided the voice.
text by: Nejc Trampuž
NOVI NARAVNI SVET
Novi naravni svet, Tim Kropivšek, sound + light installation
A bitter, yet optimistic message packed within glass vials about the ever advancing sixth mass extinction of the anthropocene era.
The new natural world is rooted in the consequences of the Anthropocene, known as the sixth mass extinction. Through this project, I aim to highlight humanity's destructive relationship with the natural environment and to instill in the viewer a sense of both involvement and responsibility in the ongoing degradation of the world’s biodiversity. The chosen media for the physical manifestation of this project are sound and installation. Utilizing sound synthesis and light bodies, I have crafted an interactive installation that represents the new natural world—a world that humanity diligently constructs upon the foundations of nature. Yet, this new world will be far from vibrant, like the Earth is—at least for now. The recordings of endangered animals’ cries, which the viewer will granularly synthesize through their interaction, carry not only the bitter awareness that these may be our last memories of them but also a reminder that it is not too late for coexistence.
Each viewer is able to interact with the installation by grasping the hanging vials and bringing them closer to their ear. This movement triggers the granular synthesis of animal vocalizations; the sound begins to distort, and a red diode starts to pulsate, signaling the imminent extinction. When the viewer returns the vial to its original position (or holds it steady in their hands), it gradually regenerates, a green diode illuminates, and the sound recordings stabilize. The species, through the viewer’s restraint or respectful behavior, is granted one more day of existence. This interaction reminds us that unless we cease our destruction of the natural environment and change our way of life, even the species that are still alive today will face extinction. In the aftermath the only way for us to interact with them will remain through digitized means, so we must tread carefully.
QUICKTIME
QuickTime, Tim Kropivšek, Interactive sound installation, 2019
Temporal waste of procrastination as an object
A variety of modern lifestyles enable us to add time-wasting rituals, which occur when a person is either overwhelmed or has nothing to do at all. Let's say a person is getting near the end of an activity - a primary activity - and that is when the mind derails from the original timeline, as this person starts to think about a secondary activity or simply procrastinate. This person is also you and me.
As this happens to all of us the time that was originaly planned for a primary activity, gets discarded and becomes a waste but without a physical form. Quicktime thematizes the problematic of the continuous watching of tv series and uses a part of those series - the ones that affected me personally - as a material at forming temporal waste into an object. We, humans - targetting the ones who are living in the comfort of capitalism - are building time-repurposing rituals, which stray us from our primary activity.
Just as we discard a non-working bike, we can discard some time. These rituals are created around a particular object or activity, that cause us a great emotional or physical response, which is strong enough to divert the stream of time from a primary activity to the secondary one. That is when we enter the phase of procrastination and discard the time, transforming it into a temporal waste. In the place of the lost time, we replace it with another terciary activity; for example: A person is studying for a test and during that, a thought of lighting up a cigarette on the balcony crawls into their mind, starting the ritual.It then continues with taking the physical stage as this person grabs a lighter and so on.
Dvigalo/Elevator
Dvigalo/Elevator, Tim Kropivšek, Interactive sound installation, 2017, Bachelor diploma work
Elevator to my own and your surreality.
The goal with final work the Elevator was double
sided. Firstly I set myself to make an artwork that
would match the surrealist idea and second one, to
achieve a certain visual look that surrealists of 20th
century approved of. I started of with photographing
the nudes in ordinary posing situations as seen at
the evening drawing clasess. I chose the positions
intentionally, as a personal critique on depressed
human creativity while constantly studying the
human body and just copying it. I showed my
protest trough saying that it makes no sense drawing
realistically when we humans are way to creative
to be spending time just copying; I took a camera
and took a photo that got me the same visual result.
Looking at the photo, I painted a more creative
situation of that from the photo and incorporating
symbols which represented certain actions from
my life. Combined together, we get the definition
of surrealism after Breton, who said that surrealism
is reality lifted onto a higher artistic plane. So the
photograph represents the reality while the painting
in a Dalían style presents the state above reality, the
natural human state.
To enhance this contrast, Iadded the second way of surrealist improved way of making surreal art, which is automatic drawing. For that, similliar as Dalí was doing with his paranoic-critical technique, I deprived myself from sleep long enough to be able to enter the state of having lucid reality: the hipnagogic state between wakeness and sleep. When I was in that state I started drawing with my eyes closed and the result were visual apropriations of Breton’s and Soupalt’s Magnetic fields, which are automatic texts.I went on in researching how to add more to this mixed media installation and the answer layed in me again. It was music, and I set off to record 5 different improvisations on guitar, bass and added beatbox, which all together is also my audiotorial answer to Magnetic fields. Later, I packed everything into a big isolating box and incorporated three light sources each resembling one way of entering human subcosciosuness, and made each of them blink on different frequencies of the improvisations. Finally I put mirrors inside the box to make it familliar as a everyday elevator in the mall, but without the function of physical lift. With the visual parts and audio being a highly personal and subjective work, I defined this as an elevator to my surreality and as it is made for only one person to see it at one time, that person is closed inside the box, it is also and elevator to the surreality of the experiencer.
Energy wasted
Energy Wasted, Tim Kropivšek, Interactive sound installation, projection mapping, 2018
Elevator to my own and your surreality.
Energy Wasted is made in a node based
environment, a program called vvvv.
It criticizes the given way of life, which is fast,
stressful and relentless on our physical as much
as mental health. With us having to be at many
places at the same time, we also increase the
use of power, leading to household lights left
on for no one, light polution and therefore a
higher demand for electricity, that means more
production of it from powerplants, and ofcourse,
a bigger environmental impact, also resulting
in global warming. The interactive installation is
made from 6 computer mice and a projection. As
the spectator moves the mice, the windows on
the buildings projected start to turn on and off,
flicker and wake up the city as the sound of the
busy street is played. as we stop moving the mice,
everything stops. The mice in this work represent
the people of this world, running like mice in a
wheel, always rushing somewhere... to nowhere.
circulette
Circulette, Tim Kropivšek, Coding work, 2018
A p5.js program for creative painting.
Circulette is a program, based on programming
language Javascript - p5.js. The program is used
for digital painting. The artist is limited to use only
a shape of circle to produce a picture and at the
same time, there is no popular undo option.
I started with development of my interactive
webpage, and Circulette was going to be a part of it.
It would allow the user to be creative and freely paint
over the page content while browsing - and also
to save the final result. I started this project with
a zero knowledge about programming language
javascript p5.js - and with a bit of experimentation
I created a interesting piece of a software, which is
embedded in web browser and is controlled with
a mouse and keyboard.
We have preset keys onkeyboard to choose a colour and blending modeof the circles, as well as the background. With aclick on a mouse, a circle appears on the digitalcanvas at the spot where cursor is. Consistent press on a mouse generates a consistent line ofcircles that forms on the cursor path. The size ofcircles can be regulated with a mouse wheel.In 2020 some changes were added to the code,such as the possibility to transform the circle brush into elipses, which makes for a perspective effect when drawing worms. More colors were added and more blending modes too. The new ongoing series of collages Nano Fauna, are also made with Circulette, but rather than drawing everything in the program that doesn't have an undo command, I use the program to draw separate pieces and assemble them in Photoshop.
BLINDED IN BLISS
Blinded in Bliss, Tim Kropivšek, Sound installation, 2019
An aural homage to millions of voiceless beings.
Today, we live in a world, which you could say it's comfort itself but yet it contradicts itself. In a short hundred years, since the first industrial revolution and after the world wars got paid their toll, modern society started flourishing in just about everything; science and industry, education system, government represive system, internet and with it the brainwashing of people, causing an era, marked with mass blindness and confusion.
We became so evolved and strong as a species that we started to value ourselves more than other species. This blindness is caused by materialistic fetishism, which is teaching us, that to buy is to be. Basically what that means is that the consumeralist structure made us exchange our primal senses - which we need to survive - as well as our connection with nature decreased to make place for commodities and objects that entertain us and equally as much distract us from our natural ways. We became machines without or with too many passions leaving us confused and unoriented.
Media is one of the main actors in this conspiracy. It is feeding us these things, the delivery system of what I discussed before. As an artist I know that extremes in feelings is what gets human's attention the most; just like in the nature when we were only so to say animals, we were atracted by smell of food, sight of color contrasts, taste of food. Promotion uses this in excess but in a smart way to lure us towards the fastet car, most vibrant clothes, towards the sweetest candy, the saltiest chips, the fat-dripping piece of meat. We are unaware of our bodies, all that matters are our brainwashed egos, because of which we are willing to make unethical, unhealthy and egoistic decisions which all have a victim.
With this project I am focusing on the phenomena in human perception, a transparent wall incepted by media and promotion, causing a simple rendering of meat and animals as two different things (living beings), using tradition and human history to justify. Since 1930's untill nowadays the meat consumption increased tremenduosly. USA alone consumes as much chickens in one day as they used to eat in a whole year in 1930!
Why did it came to this? Over eating could originate from times of British invasion on americas, where they saw native people eating only a few times per week. Despite native people there were thriving on their diet, invaders decided, in order to be more civilized, to establish a 3 meals per day standard that we have today. Also in times of the world wars, as I mentioned, people didn't eat that much meat, as our species does now. All of this made it easier to break the connection between a living being and a commodity called meat, made with an expense of taking lives.
And yet promotion couldn't work so good if it didn't have a solid base to build it's profit upon: tradition. What tradition set in motion, media enhanced it - I can't remeber the last Christmas or Easter when we ate all the food and we didn't throw it away. In this moment we are flooded with posters, adds, magazines all teasing our senses and the receptors for materialism with meat and animal products - that are killing us. Would you look at this contradiction, this joke, made to not only abuse animals but humans too all for a thing called profit? In the battle money versus life, unfortunately money wins.
This theory that meat is not the same as an animal - but yet if someone would eat human flesh it would be outrageuos - is caused by the blindness that this society has constructed by itself, following media promotion of happy animals, happy farms, etc. How can an animal be happy if she/he is confined in a small disgusting space waiting for his/her final day? How can people so easily look away from this industry and enjoy meat, not connectng it in a corpse?
This contradiction also fascinates me, it's really a food for thought. Blinded in Bliss illustrates this exact phenomena in the shape of sound. Slaughter is something that frightens and disgusts us, animals dying is after all not a pleasent sight nor the sound. But yet, meat is good, meat is bringing the masses together the smell of barbecued meat is attractive, makes our saliva rushing into our mouth; smell in the slaughterhouse is nothing like that, that's where they produce the taste of death, that separates us and them and kills us bit by bit, physicaly and mentaly.
So in that regard, a contradiction that I created is to communicate towards the truth by creating music for meditation out of soundscapes from slaughterhouses. Just like meat is presented good, meditation is good and on the other hand the sounds that animals cry out in their last hours are horifying, so I say is the meat. This sound piece, is the messenger of truth and will crush the contradiction, by being a contradiction. Blinded in Bliss tries to equalize the meat and animals in suffering. Lastly it's also my homage to all of beautifull creatures, who's lives are taken away for commodity and profit of the human race.Rest in bliss.
PODNEPNICA
Podnepnica, Activist video, Nejc Trampuž, sound design and production: Tim Kropivšek, voice: Polona Pečan