Para/Site Art Space presents Joao Vasco Paiva’s Sea of Mountains. Standing on the brink between abstraction and representation, Sea of Mountains is a computational video in which footage of the sea is used as the score for a generative audio piece.

A shot of a small part of Victoria harbor is registered at some point of the day. The traffics at the harbor that create the wave oscillation are kept outside the frame, showing only their effects. Through an established digital protocol, the formless water within the frame functions as a dynamic print abundant in microscopic variations, which induces the audio component with a constant flow of diverse pitch and volume variations.
Although the understanding of the relations between the video and the generated sound requires close observation, the piece does not demand an awareness of the calculus made within the computation. The focal point is on the possibilities within a framed parcel of the ocean instead of the hidden computation.
 
With a background in Fine arts with a special focus on painting, Joao Vasco Paiva moved to Hong kong in 2006 where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Media, by the School of Creative Media , City University of Hong Kong. His work is characterized by the appropriation of natural phenomena, by mapping apparently random situations and presenting them in an aesthetically organized framework.

He presents his work in single channel videos, audio visual performances, sound recordings and installations. Since 2008 his work as been intensively shown both locally and internationally, in festivals such as Athens Video Art Festival, Art Beijing, FILE International Festival of Electronic Language, London Festival of Exploratory Music, Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards, Microwave International New Media Festival, Moscow, Young Art Biennial, and in other venues and locations in places such as Athens , Beijing, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, London, Moscow, Porto , Sao Paulo and Vienna .