LAYER 09: IMAGES

 

interforest equinox

made in Pure data using GEM extension, there is music too but I forgot to record the sound for this one. routed all changing parameters to volume of a mono synth. trees are generated using an L-system (taken and modified from an example patch). ways to move forward: generate more variables for the L-system to have more complex branching patterns, craft a more extensive lofi 3d environment with simple shapes, create and import .obj files, hook up separate parameters to different musical parameters (frequency, amplitude gates, specific midi input)

"The denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the semantic artifice of connotation, which is extremely dense, especially in advertising." 

-Roland Barthes, "Rhetoric of the Image" in Image, Music, Text, 45 

Without time to catch my breath I hurried my step to keep up with her, so that my tongue, wrapped around her hand, would not violently push my head forward at each step of hers, unburdened despite myself. The glazed tiled patterns of the forest floor passed below my feet, which dodged scattered marbles and electrical wires.
"So often does one miss the trees for the forest," she remarked barely audibly, as if to a third person walking right beside her. Struggling to keep up with her limber pace, I nearly run into her as she stands still before a tree. The forest clears and the few trees that I see seem remarkably strange. I know they are trees, perhaps because she'd just spoken about trees. My labored breathing slows, and still open-mouthed with a limp and wrinkled tongue hanging several feet out, I gaze outward. The interforest hardly seems one, only a few line the horizon. A strange feeling fills me, the trees do not feel right. However obvious it may be that they are in fact trees, they feel staged, planted by some demon to trick me. A cold breeze darts across my skin. She remains unfazed, not even a strand of hair succumbing to the wind. Perhaps it was just my imagination. But then the trees trees turn to the wind, all as one, in the most awful way. They turn in a way that a tree shouldn't turn, in my years walking the interforest never have I seen a tree turn like that, or turn at all for that matter. She looks outward too, but she seems to see more, to see farther.

"What seems so natural, when viewed up close, outside the contexts imposed upon it, can become so strange."

In reply, I reach out my hand to touch the tree, but it remains infinitely far from me, in another world. I can only touch it with my eyes, I think, but that thought seems so strange too, like it belonged to someone else. 

"Did someone plant that tree because they wanted you to see it?" 

Of course not. I remain silent on account of the tongue rotting in my mouth. 

"What is a tree made of?"

I point to the trunk and the branches and the leaves (are there leaves?). 

"Let's just say a tree is made of a trunk, branches, and leaves. Do the trunk, branches, and leaves come before the tree, or does the tree come first to produce the trunk, branches, and leaves?" 

Before I can respond, the tongue yanks my head forward and we resume our march through the forest.