Soup


How does one perform under the conditions of a worldwide pandemic? This question provides the basis for the looping multimedia film, "Soup" (2020). 
"Soup" (2020), is an immersive multimedia experience that unpacks the conditioned reality of COVID-19. It examines the broad impact of COVID-19 on western society, including the ramifications of increased alienation, disconnectivity, and socio-environmental shifts, the project aims to present the pandemic's ramifications. The visual structure of "Soup," designed in Photoshop, P5.js, and Sketchup, is formed by stop motion editing that shifts, edits, and manipulates objects while adhering to a digital form of technical, social distancing measures. Still images in this video are moved in increments of 2 or 6, reflective of 2 metre/ 6 feet distancing procedures. The 5-minute video responds to the pandemic's social byproducts, including spatial transformation and shifts in social behaviour.
For this reason, the sound component of this film plays with an oscillating dynamic. The audience is initially lulled into a false sense of comfort. The scene transforms, and the once-enticed audience is suddenly forced to adapt to the new visual and audio stimulation. This oscillation between comfort and discomfort parallels the emotional trajectory of the pandemic's evolution.
 While multiple sounds in this video are field recordings, the majority have been produced in Native Instruments Massive and have subsequently been processed by an array of filters, further modifying their original sounds. These sounds are reused and manipulated throughout the project until they morph into "spectral synth soup," which mimics the virus's all-consuming presence in our lives. Several sounds reintroduce themselves throughout the video in different capacities, as a form of contamination that mimics COVID-19's multiple waves of impact. While the mix functions on a declining model, high tones raise the sound floor only to descend later, as is similarly documented in the pandemic's curve data. "Soup" is the artistic abstraction of pandemic statistical data both visually and sonically. 




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