SOUND OBSESSED
4. gavcloud
Building The Entopia
Building The Entopia, video with sound (2024)
Tertiary Education Expenditures, video with sound (2024)
Entopia is a concept coined by the Greek architect and urban planner Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis. As he states, "What human beings need is not utopia ('no place') but entopia ('in place') a real city which they can build, a place which satisfies the dreamer and is acceptable to the scientist, a place where the projections of the artist and the builder merge." Building The Entopia derives both its rhythmic and melodic information from datasets compiled by the World Bank representing basic research, applied research, and experimental research spending globally from 1996-2001. The pitch information is scaled to an Erv Wilson microtonal tuning. The video features original footage filmed on-location in São Paulo Brazil, Tokyo Japan, and the Kumbh Mela India.
Data source: Multiple sources compiled by World Bank
Tertiary Education Expenditures
Tertiary Education Expenditures is a 90-second audio/visual piece that uses data sonification as its principal process. Utilizing UNESCO Institute of Statistics data for number of people of any age group who are enrolled in tertiary education expressed as a percentage of the total population from 1970-2022, TEE creates linear isomrophic mappings between musical pitch and alphabetically ordered countries and their respective data-points, each pitch representing a single year's percentage of enrollment. Rhythmical variety is established when the percentage of enrollment is very low, which causes rhythmic 'rests' in the melody to occur below a certain threshold. The pitch information is scaled to the Euler microtonal tuning.
Data source: UNESCO via World Bank
World Bank variable id: SE.TER.ENRR
Original source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics
ARTIST BIO:
gavcloud is a multimedia practioner and information designer whose work fuses premeditated music composition, free improvisation and esoteric software to form a multifaceted stylistic praxis. Born in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico he composes for a variety of ensembles and performs internationally as a pianist with programs which include new works and those of the classical repertory. He has performed in Los Angeles, Seattle, Mérida, Berlin, and has accompanied Erykah Badu with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and tenor León de Castillo in Vienna. His work has been featured at Transart Festival (Bolzano IT), Międzynarodowe Spotkania Teatrów Tańca (Lublin PL), Cultura Mazatlán (Mazatlán MX), Pacific Standard Time LA/LA (Los Angeles US), and his opera with filmmaker E. Elias Merhige Polia & Blastema was premiered at Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O22, with successive screenings at Offscreen Film Festival (Brussels BE) and E’trange Festival (Paris FR). Additional works for film made in collaboration with the conceptual artist David Lamelas have screened at The Getty (Los Angeles US), Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago US), and Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires AR). He is currently based in Los Angeles.