Tesseract

Vijay Thillaimuthu

Tesseract
Image credit: Vijay Thillaimuthu
  • Format: Live Performance
  • Session: concert-7
  • Paper PDF link
  • Presence: In person
  • Duration: 30
  • Location: 26th black box

Abstract:

Tesseract is a live audiovisual work for the superimposition of lasers and video projections as controlled by sound. The same voltage that is amplified as sound, derived from a modular synthesiser and theremin controller, also deflects laser light into visible patterns and becomes the source for real-time video projections. The different display technologies are then mapped together to present a unified experience.

Tesseract is designed to provoke a questioning of the mechanisms of perception, creating interactions between two-dimensional and three-dimensional visualisations. The work is developed in reference to the tesseract, a four-dimensional hypercube beyond our ability to properly visualise, analogous to what a three-dimensional cube is to a two-dimensional square. Tesseract is inspired by notions of quantum processes that take place across dimensions, unable to be perceived, and scarcely understood. We commonly use complex power and communication networks without understanding their processes in totality. For example, transistors use quantum tunnelling while lasers use the stimulated emission process, where photons essentially teleport when interacting with excited electrons (to create laser light). These are phenomena that can only be explained through theoretical physics. This is an ambitious work pushing the possibilities of existing technologies. This work imagines interaction with forces beyond our understanding. The system has been developed on the principle of Vector Synthesis or Oscilloscope Music, whereby the stereo image of the sound signal articulates the left and right axes of a graphical image on a Cartesian plane. The performer interacts with the system and decides whether to disrupt or accept the generative potential of the system. As both the projections and laser images are derived from the same source, sound voltage, they can be seamlessly connected.