bombaybeach is a study of contrasts and investigates processes of degeneration through visual pixelization and audio bitcrushing. Its two contrasting audiovisual sources, a windblown cactus accompanied by gentle windchimes and a noisy, foamy wind-tossed Salton Sea surf, were captured on a smart phone during my residency at brahman.ai in Bombay Beach, CA. The audio and visual degenerative processes of bombaybeach run in tandem with each other, with bigger areas being pixelated corresponding to higher degrees of bitcrushing. The pixelation of the cactus video is accompanied by a displacement factor that changes over time, adding motion to the otherwise static pixelation process. Like much of my other work, the degenerative processes rely heavily on random number generation to control parameters such as which area of the cactus video to pixelate and which squares of surf video to overlay. In the creation of bombaybeach, the degenerative processes were controlled and triggered in real-time through the use of an AKAI LPD8 MIDI controller. This allowed me to channel my instincts as a classically-trained musician in sculpting the dramatic contours of bombaybeach which follow an arch form where the beginning and ending calm of the cactus scene is completely overtaken by the noisy surf about three-and-a-half minutes into the video’s runtime. bombaybeach was realized through Processing and Pure Data and created in response to a call put out by the Small File Media Festival, in which a shorter, compressed version of the video premiered in August 2020. bombaybeach was mentioned in the context o the Small File Media Festival in the Volume 71/72 “CRISIS” double issue of Millennium Film Journal.
