Forgotten Characters is a live music and video performance using software-driven instruments developed and programmed by the artists to celebrate the origins of computer graphics. The visual aspect of the piece uses software written in openFrameworks to pixel map a blend of live and prerecorded video to the characters of the extended ASCII library. Modern video images are transformed to reference the graphics capabilities of computers prior to the earliest bitmaps, calling our attention to both our nostalgia for low-tech imagery how far we’ve come in visual communication technology. The resulting videos are projected on to a sculptural arrangement of screens that surround each performer.
First performed with live music by Ulrich Krieger and Boris Hegenbart at the Goethe Institut, Los Angeles on November 14th, 2014.