Paul Devens: Paused Utopia

This 8’00” piece is mainly composed out of audio files from image to sound-software. Some of the original sketches of the ‘New Babylon’ project of Constant Nieuwenhuys were the visible input. Next to the rough data swaps of ‘raw’ files in between photo editing software and audio editing software, the app ‘Virtual ANS’ is used. Based upon the principles of the ANS photo-electric instrument that Sovjet engineer Evgeny Murzin developed in between 1937 and 1957, the ‘Virtual ANS’ transforms the slopes, structures, pixels, surfaces and lines of a drawing or photograph into a drone soundscape. This translation through the means of old and new technology refers to some extent to the expectations of a better life for human kind in a future that one expects – and expected - to be the plain result of all the steps in the tech revolution. That progress not only benefits, is already a certainty provided from the past.

Paul Devens http://pauldevens.com