Wall (Mur)

Red drops slowly roll down a wall, leaving traces. Their colours and trajectories are partly uncertain. The process continues until nearly the whole surface of the wall is covered. Following this, translucent drops begin to seep out, erasing the red. As their trajectories are still random, they do not completely clean the wall.

Then, once more, red drops! But this time, the drops don’t seem to leave traces at certain points, as if they don’t manage to stick.

As the process goes on, signs appear, as if revealed by the colours. We understand that the resulting image is a handwritten manuscript, which has clearly been crossed out. Then, again, translucent drops flow down. The loop thus begins again, revealing another page of the manuscript. The lighting changes slowly, evoking a succession of days and nights.

The process is accompanied by music, which mixes piano sounds with fragments of speech. This is also generative, as it is composed using the same algorithms as those determining the trajectories of the drops. This produces different variations that we nonetheless recognise as belonging to one form.

Photos and video by: Fred Périé