The universe where we find ourselves is an infinite chaos of stimuli. The mind tries to find a meaning but it is unable to manage that vast ocean of information. Then, it filters that information; a small part of it comes to us through perception. Those pieces are transformed into our experiences and memories. On that basis, we build a kind of scale model to be easier for us to understand. We call this model, reality, which defines both our external and inner world. Everything that does not pass through the filter is outside our reality and we call it noise.
But how does the filter work? Who manipulates it to control which information is filtered and what is not? How do we know that we are not leaving anything important outside, mixed in the noise? Is it ourselves or is it some strange power that selects the essential elements to build our model of reality? Are we aware that what we call reality is it not but a scale model?
Mateo Amaral
A black stone is a work in progress, a transmedia project that started in 2003. The core of this project is a film, but it also includes paintings, installations and live audiovisual performances. Mateo creates the animations, acts, directs and composes the music. The project has been exhibited in different festivals and events related to cinema, video-art, electronic music, vjing and contemporary art. Still in progress, the film is made with different animation techniques. In this opportunity, it is shown an excerpt done with vector animations, 3D simulation, rotoscoping, pixelation and glitch. Essentially, the film goes across science fiction, psychedelia, noise, terror and experimental abstraction. Built simultaneously in several layers, this work explores around the human mind functioning. Tom, the protagonist of this story, listens to his own recordings that transport him to a world of dream and hallucination. Is he awake? A black stone is a sensory experience, a hypnotic journey through the twists and turns of the mind. It is a drift out in an ocean of information, as measureless and absurd as the universe.
Mateo Amaral was born in 1979, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He graduated as Specialist in Logic and Technique of the Form and as Image and Sound Designer at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Since 2005, he studies History of Art and Aesthetics. He is part of the ceropunto.org group and he is currently focused on poetic experimentation with electronic and digital devices. Amaral took part of several group exhibitions and also collaborates and assists prestigious artists. At the moment, he undertakes research on sculptural modeling and visualization with software.
