High-resolution generative graphics and digital sound synthesis.
Custom software (JAVA, C++, SuperCollider)
Espectres is a generative visual music installation. Using pixels as the source of sound generation, you hear exactly what you see.
Driven by chance and probability, Espectres creates ever-changing scrolling spectrograms, which are transformed into electronic music. Algorithmically generated, Espectres has a musical taste, fluctuating between unique and unexpected audio sequences from drone ambients to raging rhythms or abstract microtonal landscapes.
Photo credit: Playmodes
Eloi Maduell and Santi Vilanova have been the driving force behind Playmodes since 2006. This digital craft workshop in rural Catalonia explores the interplay between art and science, philosophy, music, and technological research. Their work often takes on impossible forms: light sculptures, audiovisual instruments, projections onto the stars, or the sonification of pebbles and twigs.
Underpinning all these techniques and formats is the driving force behind their projects: creating an impure, minimalist, and abstract language of visual music. Handmade only with tools—both software and hardware—that they develop themselves. Thought turned into solder and code—open source.
Over nearly 20 years, Playmodes’ works have been exhibited in festivals and museums on all continents, from Shanghai to New York, Sydney to Amsterdam, and Barcelona to Medellín. Specialized editors have published their algorithmic graphic work. Human or cybernetic interpreters have played their music in all sorts of venues. They have won international music, art and design awards, and several art spaces, institutions and collectors worldwide treasure their pieces.
