Ausencia y los eclipses imaginarios

[Work in progress, 2020-21]

This is a cosmic mourning that emerges from a graphic score in the movement of eclipses that never were. These eclipses are imagined by an A.I. trained with images of thousands of past solar eclipses; thousands of absent suns. This A.I. is a mediator between worlds and logics that guides me by different eclipses imagined at a distance.

This piece is being created in collaboration with an A.I. called Soledad [female name that means Solitude and contains the word Sol that means Sun in Spanish].

There were so many eclipses that I got lost in the images and started seeing patterns, eyes, holes, wells, portals… observing so many suns was very ocular, a thing that makes us think that what we see looks back to us, and we live in that loop. The ocular and the absence of the sun is a tribute to many that lost their eyes and vision in the streets of the city of Santiago during the social uprising in 2019 and the following protests for justice during 2020. The absent suns that Soledad imagines compose a video that is used as a graphic score in movement. The sound piece created with this score has a vocal section where the lyrics of the song -a traditional Chilean cueca- “Llorando Ausencia” are sung. The original song is by the author Maria Teresa Lagos.

A first draft was presented at Tsonami, Sound Art Festival, 2020.