The Janus Switch
2015–19
The Janus Switch is a solo laptop performance merging live cinema and electronic sound in a poetic exploration of generative audio-visual feedback structures. Janus, the two-headed Roman god of doorways and passages was notable for the ability to look in two directions at once. The Janus Switch is a techno-poetic realization of these ideas, where signal streams are switched rapidly back and forth to create a wide range of audio-visual interactions. The system software allows for live mixing of geometric equations to create an evolving array of hybrid audio-visual forms. The result is a visceral experience produced by fleeting imagery that emerges in the process of navigating the system. Evoking a state of dynamic subjectivity, the audience must actively complete the circuit to co-create the meaning or apparent “thingness” of what the mind and body is confronting. In this process of “Janus Switching” many things, places and ideas come and go, including allusions to landscape, cellular life, plant forms, mechanistic structures, gateways, glyphs and vessels. All of the resulting sound comes from the direct sonification of the image processes. The sonification methods allow for working in both tonal/atonal and/or textural oriented modes including a wide array of subtractive noise-based soundscapes.
