Synaesthete

Over the past three years of traveling and learning new languages - from Brazilian favelas to Madagascan markets to the Amazon jungle - it became strikingly clear how little representation the average person’s experience has within global media.  In this generative film piece, a woman walks toward the viewer as her form and surroundings morph through faces and landscapes representative of Indigenous peoples I’ve met: an Ethiopian tribeswoman, a Bolivian mother, an Ifugao rice harvester, a Malagasy villager, etc. Fractals celebrating handwoven artisanship (Berber Kilims, Kuna molas, Mesob basketry, etc) pattern the imagery, finally culminating to looking toward global unity.

While this piece is a celebration of the world’s Indigenous cultures, it doesn’t substitute for the real thing. Get out and meet the world’s people, learn a common language and listen to their perspective, and support traditional artisans.

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About the Artist

The artist Synaesthete grew up oil painting and has been working with generative art in TouchDesigner for a decade.

Lately, he’s been building out frameworks in Python to further develop this open-ended expressiveness using various local ML models at the core (8 custom models were trained for this piece alone). It's a mix of techniques published in the latest generative ML research papers, combined with some of his own sorcery.

Separately, he maintains a custom-built visual instrument in TouchDesigner, and has performed live visuals for Bluetech, Silent Disco Vibe festival, and more.