circulação

Shown on a modular LED screen, circulação, ongoing since 2019, presents a collection of footage given to the artist by companies carrying out inspections for multinationals active in the extraction of natural resources and in telecommunications. The neutrality of the content is only presumed: the images show the ceaseless commodification of the landscape.
For the XII edition of Video Sound Art Festival, Daniel De Paula presents the video work together with a sound intervention using existing material or material obtained through the practice of negotiation: fragments of sound derived from Auto-Tune software and sounds from companies that collect data for the oil extraction industry. Auto-Tune is software used in pop music to correct pitch – one example is Cher’s song Believe. It was invented by Andy Hildebrand, a scientist who at the time was working for ExxonMobil, collecting seismic data to locate oil deposits underground. To obtain data on the position of new deposits, the oil industry transmits sound waves that bounce back to the source, and the data collected are analysed in an attempt to determine the composition of the ground. It was on this basis that Andy Hildebrand – an amateur flautist – created Auto-Tune. Through negotiation and observation, Daniel De Paula’s new work reveals a system of control in which the production and exchange of goods are central, even to the software used to make pop songs.