Visionreport

Visionreport is a set of techniques for the interplay of direct and computer-aided sensation, where the distinction between translation and interpretation is made ambiguous. Flickering between human and algorithmic observation, the activities of recognizing, modeling, and predicting are treated as musical forms.

Here, a handheld pen sketches lines in white across a black background, coinciding with short bursts of synthesized sound. The lines bend and waver at curves and angles, rising and falling to meet the modulating sound. These free-hand, ambiguous shapes, like writing, may be intuited as either cause or effect of the sound. Each drawn figure is analyzed while in the process of being drawn, probable future routes, indicated by fine, branching lines which proliferate where the lines end, render the set of all recognizable forms that each shape’s particular ambiguity might allow.

visionreport

In a series of demonstrations, sounds are transcribed as visual reports: Hands sketch quick graphic notation alongside computer-generated patterns—rendered strokes, torn forms, the alignment of colors and edges—to link the action of listening with the action of seeing. Layer by layer, techniques and metaphors for direct and computer-aided sensation are added. Translation and interpretation are made ambiguous, flickering between human and algorithmic observation; the activities of recognizing, modelling, and predicting viewed as musical forms.

Visionreport was first performed within the program “Hallucinations” at the Greek Film Archive, as part of Documenta 14 in Athens, June 2017.

visionreport – video drawing – excerpt

Pencil lines drawn free-hand. Ambiguous figures that may resemble letters or numbers. Fine, branching lines that indicate probable future routes. When the pencil lifts, predictions continue—lines spread, curve, and overlap, reaching to suggest a new course.

visionreport – waves

An image of light moving on water, shifting from frame to frame. For each reflected point of light, a new tone rises and falls, revealing dense melodies in every arrangement of flashes. When the image freezes, a visual pattern persists, and the tones hold their chance harmony, continuing to slowly rise or fall until the image moves again.

visionreport – masks

Cut-paper masks are manipulated on a computer-drawn grid. When a face is revealed, sweeping, low-frequency sounds trigger, and then disperse into static. As masks are added, rotated, overlapped, folded and unfolded, sound returns in subtle variations to describe each moment of recognition—I see faces, this many, here and here and here … right now.

vision report – notation

A handheld brush sketches lines in ink across a rough grid, simultaneously with short bursts of synthesized sound. The lines bend and waver at curves and angles, rising and falling to mimic the modulating sound.

visionreport – moire

Hands enter the frame, working together to rotate an image, separating it from an identical image on the layer below. As one set of parallel lines rotates against the other, the combined image appears as a moiré pattern: a row of elongated diamond shapes that shorten and multiply. Hands continue to rotate the image, returning through diamonds into long, angular shapes, and finally back to parallel lines. The sound matches the visual illusion—harmonic overtones are gradually added as the image becomes complex, removed as the image returns to simple alignment, and silenced when the lines are offset and blacked out.