For the first time ever I created something marginally artistic: a TouchDesigner animation of a Lorentz-system to the beat of Marechià by Nu Genea. Technicalities, sentimentalities and the lore of how I messed up my first live performance further down.

There is a lot behind this animation so I’ll break it down in three sections. Jump to whichever sounds interesting.

⁠Naples, my lineage and the Italodisco revival

My father emigrated from a town called Castellammare Di Stabia, one of the suburbs of Naples. He was your classic Italian womanizer who enjoyed football, scuba diving and fancy watches. To his dismay I’ve not touched a ball in over ten years and became a mathematician. However, he really didn’t have time to complain ‘cause he passed away when I was very young.

Clearly, I’ve always felt some attachment to Italy and Naples for lore purposes. I visited when I was a kid and as for my coming of age trip; think, Call me by your Name but straight. Recently I heard Brian Eno, another one of my heroes, recommend Naples ‘44 as one of his favorite books, calling Naples / the book another planet / like reading sci-fi. I bought one copy immediately. Clearly, Eno was right, the book is a masterpiece.Since finishing the book, I’ve bough at least 5 more copies, gifting it to friends and family. It is a first hand recollection of WWII and its effects in the region. Norman Lewis, the author calls Naples the anthill of humanity, giving you incredible details of the lives of the Napoletanean folks just trying to get by. The book glimpses the best and the worse of humanity. There is a direct connection between the real events that happened in 1944 and me, a Mexican with an Italian name, since my Nonna lived though the thick of it.

Simultaneously to me reading the book, more Napoletanean lore got injected into my life. With my closest friends, we play Music League. Each week we get prompts like: hard french, throwback, ok Boomer and konnichiwa.Obviously, for Japanese City Pop It’s basically a contest for bragging rights on who has the best music taste, loosely defined. For the - A 10/10 album round, a friend submitted Nu Genea’s Bar Mediterraneo. He didn’t only win the round since it’s another-media masterpiece, but he won my whole mental space for a few months. Nu is such a unique band with such a refreshing style. The album is whimsical, a mix of funk, afrobeats & jazz that will transport you to a seaside cafe. Culturally, it captures sounds from around the Med and uses at least 3 languages.Napoletanean, French & a Tunisian dialect. Nu did it way before Rosalia’s Lux Nu also really leans into the Napoletanean vibes perfectly. On their Tiktoks and videos they present us Cosimo, a character who could be my uncle or my father’s friend. Serioulsy, don’t miss out on Nu. Marechià, the album’s single and the song chosen for my animation, exudes all what Naples is and what it means to me.

Bar Mediterraneo also made my group of friends obsessive over ItaloDisco. Nu and other artists like Pellegrino & Zodyaco and Il Mago del Gelato took the sounds of the ’80s and rephrased it for modernity. Similarly, lab labels like NG Regords and Toy Tonics allow artists to innovate from the synth-heavy sounds, imbuing it with funk, jazz and electronic elements. If you’re interested listen to DJ Tennis’ set where he explains the historical context. Alternatively, I made a playlists that I guarantee will get you vibing.

TouchDesigner and why this is technically cool

The thing that generates the visuals looks like this:

The nodes and unintelligible lines are called a network which I created on a program called TouchDesigner. This program basically sits at intersection of the things I like: maths, code, electronic music and strobe lights. In TouchDesigner you connect boxes called nodesIf you know me in person, you know that connecting boxes is probably one of my favorite hobbies to eventually form a complex network that does something - usually, animation related. In the screenshot above, every box controls a tiny piece of the whole. Every parameter can be modified: the colors of the particles swaying between orange and blue, the position where the particles are spawning and the direction of the wind acting on them. Every detail is controllable, modulated and some, triggered in real time by me. That’s how I performed and failed at showcasing this live.

In short, the network generates $(x,y,z)$ coordinates following a Lorenz dynamical system, controlling the position where the particles spawn.For those mathematically inclined, this is the equivalent of playing Wonderwall on a guitar at a campfire. I’ll get better. I promise. When you trace the path, it generates a butterfly-looking curve. This is the mathematics behind the butterfly effect and chaos theory, which underpin the idea that the wings of a butterfly can cause a hurricane.

Everything else, are effects acting on these particles. First, there’s an oscillator controlling the color gradient, switching from orange to blue based on the color palette of the song’s album cover. During the chorus, I trigger a fly-over effect: picture a fan blowing the particles into the camera. Similarly, I can trigger the rotation of camera affecting the whole frame of reference and making it look trippy. The grand finale is just some turbulence acting on the particles. Even the song itself is affecting the particles. We call this audio-reactivity. If you listen (and watch) closely, the shades of white-blue will jump to the beat of the base. Last, all effects are combined to generate quite different outcomes, making every performance one of a kind.

TouchDesigner is a professional software for design and animation that real artists use. A video like this is just the tip of the iceberg. The pros can do some pretty cool stuff with it. I’m by no means good, I was just learning. However, TD is a tool that rewards happy mistakes allowing you to be creative with relatively little understanding of the code behind it. My goal is, as a friend put it, to be able to jam on it, the same way you’d do with a synth, a DAW or any other artistic media of your liking. The cover in the homepage of this blog was also designed by me in TD.

DadaGeeks and my failed performance at DadaLabs

I was walking around exploring Austin when I saw an unassuming warehouse with massive black lettering spelling DADALABS. Broken electric beats were pouring out of the front door. Clearly, I strolled in and, in one of the most serendipitous events of my life I found my new favorite third place.

DadaGeek is a nonprofit organization that supports digital arts and electronic musicians. Basically the coolest people alive. Their HQ, DadaLabs is this atmospheric warehouse, full of lasers, projectors and one of the best HiFi systems I’ve ever heard. They also do art installations around the world. During the summer, they offered a course on TouchDesigner. I mostly wanted to learn how to mix music and become a DJ but hey, this software was exactly something right up my alley. The class was amazing, kudos to Kyle, Brandon and Devin for fostering such a great group of people.

For the student showcase, I had the honor of being the intermezzo between two actual artists: Hollow Earth and Hexpartner. They were actually playing instruments, mixing live and utilizing TD as their audio-reactive background.

Now, besides needing an alter-ego. I don’t play any musical instruments, not well at least. This represents an issue for an actual live performance. Hence, I designed my network to have live effects. Yes, I am simply pressing buttons on my keyboard but I would have looked even dumber just standing there, no? I hid myself in the corner and let the song and the visuals do the heavy lifting. Honestly, I started vibing and I was having fun. The insane sound system, the smoke machines and the 3-wall HD projectors made it look way more impressive than Youtube video. The small crowd also seemed to be enjoying it. Right at the climax, instead of pressing the “2” key on my keyboard to trigger the fly by effect, I pressed “1”, the reset everything trigger, connected to every other node. The music stopped. The particles disappeared and everything started over in the most anti-climatic way possible. I heard an audible ooohwwww and felt bad. However, I tried to play it cool and faded down the audio and the visuals. Everyone clapped but still, why did I mapped the restart button right next to an effects button? Truly a humbling experience.

There is probably some deeper meaning about putting yourself out there. A parallelism between the performance, failed or not, and this blog. However, I actually don’t care. What matters to me is that I tried doing something new. I learned, made friends and enjoied the process of making it. Coming from the maths world where there’s a right or wrong answer, despite the beauty of math, trying to do art is refreshing and freeing. A process without an end. An activity with infinite degrees of freedom and a loosely defined output. I’ll eventually write about creativity and building.

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