The FLOODS Live Performance: Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente
This page is about the live performance of THE FLOODS at the Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente in Coimbra, Portugal. For the original 2021 installation and performance at the Crane Arts Icebox in Philadelphia, see THE FLOODS and THE FLOODS Live Performance.
For another recent performance of THE FLOODS, see THE FLOODS Live Performance: SPLICE Institute 2023.
Performance Info
THE FLOODS: A generative and combinatory sound-image-text performance
Roderick Coover (Temple University), Adam Vidiksis (Temple University), Nick Montfort (MIT)
THE FLOODS submerges viewers into a kaleidoscope of climate futures, blending creative nonfiction, computational writing and sound. The code-driven visual experience is filmed by Roderick Coover. It features live musical performance and electronic sound by composer-drummer Adam Vidiksis. The generative text by computational poet Nick Montfort.
Images filmed above and below the water on the Atlantic Coast, the Mediterranean Coast, the North Sea and the English Channel depict human and non-human land transformations, movements, infrastructures, floods and beacons that are transformed through layering, collage, montage and code-based operations. The live music and sound design by Adam Vidiksis accentuates the collision of natural and industrial rhythms and the power of irrational forces, evoking imagined futures through dream-like sequences and by moving between surface and submerged realities and sentience. A generative text attempts to describe conditions that are fundamentally inchoate – loss, longing, extinction. The experience unfolds in ever-changing movements to suggest choices, narratives and meanings. Structural arcs in the code carry viewers across experiences of observation, transformation, longing, loss and possibility. As seemingly familiar places become transfigured, the work suggests that rising waters don’t only change places, they also impact memories, desires, dreams and language. https://itwillhappenhere.net/
This performance is part of the It will happen here… project.
About ELO 2023
On the 12th and the 14th of July 2023, the Electronic Literature Conference Conference 2023 “Overcoming Divides: Electronic Literature and Social Change” will migrate for a few hours to a stage. This multimedia festival of performances, which will take place in the Convento São Francisco (room C2A – Mondego room) and in the Teatro Académico Gil Vicente, will gather several artists on stage, emphasizing the close link between electronic literature and performative arts.
Focusing on the same themes suggested by ELO Conference 2023, performers will address social and environmental issues, enveloping the audience in an stimulating and thought-provoking event.
All performances were carefully evaluated and selected by an Artistic Committee. The chairs of ELO Conference 2023 would like to thank this Committee, and all the artists that shared their performances with us. We would also like to thank the Blue House, the present director (Sílvio Santos) and former director of TAGV (Fernando Matos de Oliveira), as well as the TAGV’s team, for technical support.
Organizers: Daniela Côrtes Maduro, Manuel Portela, Alex Saum-Pascual, Rui Torres.
Collaboration: Isabel Campante, João Rui, João Silva (Jorri).
Artists performing at these events: Adam Vidiksis, Aidan Walker, Ana Caballero, Caitlin Fisher, Carolina López, Christian Bök, Daria Petrova (Convento São Francisco), Ismael Faro, J. R. Carpenter, Jacob Hall, Jules Rawlinson, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Marcos De La Fuente, Mariel Martínez, Mark Marino, Nick Montfort e Ryan Veeder (Convento São Francisco), Ottar Ormstad (Convento São Francisco), Roderick Coover, Sasha Stiles, Terhi Marttila, Yan St-Onge.
12 July 2023, Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente, 9:30 p.m.
