NoInput is a performance by the collective PDP11, with the participation of Carlos García Miragall, Francisco Sanmartin Piquer, Raul Leon, Jorge Dabaliña and Roser Domingo from the Universitat Politéncia de Valencia and Laboratorio de Luz research group and Carlos Barberá from the Universidad de Alicante. This performance was carried out at the LPM Live Performer Meeting festival in Rome (2022) and at the Centro del Carmen in Valencia as part of the Leonardo Laser Talks in 2022.
Noinput is a conceptual sound performance where sound is generated by processing a video signal. The Anglo-Saxon affectation that could be given to ‘noinput’ is: no input, no selection, no contribution or no input. The sense of the performance is to come up with a visual and sound contribution from the non-existence of a signal or from a signal generated from interference. In the end, the message arises from the processes and impediments that create the interruptions of the signals when they are weak or non-existent and how this impediment generated by the interference is the message itself that is transmitted.
When an audio cable is connected to the video input of an interface, an interruption of the sound is produced which generates frequencies in the form of noise, resolved by feedback. This sound signal is looped through the output and input of two video processors connected in parallel to constantly modify the frequencies. Sonically, the main sound is captured directly from the analogue video signal just at the end point of its visual presentation. Direct capture is a special kind of sonification, since the video signal is interpreted without any modification as a sound signal. An accumulation of interferences is produced through the alteration of signals and the superimpositions with which the frequencies are reiterated in the performance room, defining the content of the sound space. In turn, the video signal is projected onto a screen, making the images of the feedback signals visible. This superimposition tries to show causal relations of image and sound at the same instant, so that the interference is perceived in its different modes of expression. The aim is to be able to listen to images that are normally inaudible at the same time as they are made visible through a projector. The proposal aims to fill the space with frequencies generated from interference in order to be able to relate them directly to the image.
The performance, from different points of view or ways of understanding its meaning, is conceptualised as a means of expression that allows us to relate image and sound when they are generated by the disturbance of an improper signal. The proposal generates affections in the body from processes of noise production. Through looped repetitions, on the one hand, of the sound and on the other, of the image, in a way, it is proposed to generate a double back and forth of sound and image that can never be repeated, proposing the continuous originality of sonority. On the one hand, there is a feedback of sound that generates new sounds. These, when linked to the image, produce, in turn, new images that cannot be repeated in new processes.
With this, the performance alludes to a sum of these kinds of concrete perceptions. From the same modified signal through a reiteration, new links are generated between them, where redundancy is capable of producing new images that are never repeated. The superimposition in time of interspersed signals generates effects with which the body’s senses respond through the perception of images and sounds, provoking sensations between one sensitive organ and another. The eruption of the sound and the repetitive interaction of the interferences, also presented through the image, in addition to generating sensations reminiscent of the tuning of a cathode ray television, gives a prominence to the eruption of the signals that becomes constant over time. In this sense, the constant interruption of sounds and images in the sudden condition of the sound and visual action is intertwined with the sense of generating continuous cuts in the continuity referred to visual space and sound time. The content of space, starring the image projected on the screen and the sound emitted by the loudspeakers, is conceptualised by the interruption generated by the interferences that produce a series of superimpositions, which tend to be imperceptible, that we could call micro-spaces of relation. After all, the interruption of frequencies generates an onset of sound and image made up of instants of time that constantly attempt to formalise them.
This condition emphasises a whole series of links conceptualised according to their reiteration, but also according to the irruption and interruption of the image that is turned off and on in the constant transformation of the analogue image of a video signal, or in the sound jumps between the digital and the analogue signal turned into noise.
The randomness and the origin of the noise through interference, as well as the processes of the generation of the sound signal and its interrupted continuity from the reiteration, make the action an unrepeatable event. They are pieces that can be more or less surprising or even seductive. The performance, in the processes for the generation of sound, has been foreseen solely from the interconnections generated by the visual and auditory signals. In these sound and visual frequencies, suspensions are unpredictable and, therefore, the conception of interference generates an unrepeatable element. This leads us, in this case, to define alteration, interruption and irruption as actions that transgress the facts to transform the foreseeable.
NoInput is a performance that is part of the results of the research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation entitled » ARGOS. Performances audiovisuales desarrolladas a partir del sonido y del espacio escénico » (PID2020-116186RA-C32).
