Still is a mesmerising audio-visual work performed by electro-acoustic instruments, dancer and custom software. During the performance, these multiple components join together to generate real-time visuals projected in the space, together with an immersive soundscape.
The artist will perform on stage using the instruments and his body - tracked in real-time - as an interface to control the visuals.
The sound of the musical instruments will be analyzed by a custom real-time analysis software which extracts live data used for the content creation. Using AI analysis techniques the system will react to the artist’s movement, generating its own audio-visual performance, and ultimately establishing a dialog with him.

The theme of the performance is perception of time in contemporaneity. As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han says, "the value we attach today to the vita activa is producing a crisis in our sense of time. As a remedy to this, we should revitalizing the vita contemplativa, our capacity for reflection and contemplation. When life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness".

Still linked the artist Natan Sinigaglia with the VVVV team. Natan Sinigaglia is a sound and visual artist. With a strong background in music, contemporary dance and real-time graphics, he explores the infinite interconnections between sound, space and image, creating canvases where languages lose their boundaries and share forms and meanings. vvvv’s main goal is to allow users to rapidly experiment with different ideas. By unifying access to different technologies, like computer-vision, machine-learning, 3d-animation, VR, AR,… vvvv makes them available to a wider audience, and more accessible to people without programming backgrounds.

The goal of the residency was to create a live performance using the vvvv programming environment. During the residency, the priority shifted from the creation of the artwork towards the creation of a collection of software tools that open new possibilities in multiple creative scenarios.

Still performance at CENTQUATRE-PARIS, during the STARTS Residencies Days, 2020 @Quentin Chevrier

During the residency, the artist wasn’t just using the programming language in development at vvvv studio, he was digging deeper, exploring, adding to it with his requests and ideas. This is, for a tech company, the best-case scenario, in which there is someone who is thinking within the system, making more out of it. A significant part of the developers’ time was spent in communicating with the artist and considering his requests and observations. According to the Tech Project, most of these feedbacks were immediately useful for the development: either a report of something that used to work and didn’t anymore with the latest updates, or some suggestion about features while they get implemented. The other requests were not priorities, but they were added on the list of things to develop after the release of the technology.

The outcome of the technical research is this collection of software:

• Kairos
• Model-Runtime-Editor software architecture
• Interpolation Engine
• Elementa
• ParticlesSystem
• Generators
• AudioAnalysis library

Even if the vvvv team is close to its users’ community, and pay attention to their requests and remarks it was the first time that they had an end-user in their office for several months. As a result, they really understood how people were using the software, which was unclear, the missing features, etc. Thanks to this cooperation, the live-programming environment became more efficient, user-friendly while at the forefront of technology.

Interview with Natan Sinigaglia at CENTQUATRE-PARIS, during the STARTS Residencies Days, 2020

“Still” is an audio-visual work performed by electro-acoustic instruments, dancer and custom software. During the performance, these multiple components join together to generate real-time visuals projected in the space, together with an immersive soundscape. The sound of the musical instrument gets analyzed by a custom real-time analysis software which extracts live data used for the content creation. The performance turns around the theme of contemplation; in this sense, the abstraction of the visuals represents the possibility to stay on the threshold between what’s known and what is still undefined, in a delicate and powerful state that allows the forms of comprehension to mutate. By entering into this contemplative state, the perception of time, its depth, vastness, flavour completely changes.

Read the final report