Catalogue > At random

dresden.cuba.clouds is a generative video which incorporates imagery from the skies above the city of Dresden coupled with footage of clouded ice formations and video from the Museum of the Revolution in Havana. This small database of video is processed in realtime and is sensitive to a number of parameters derived from, and responsive to, an audio recording of the Cuban "sonic attacks" of 2017. The footage of the skies and ice in particular also speak to notions of veracity as they are indistinguishable from one another. As a number of the reported cases of aural and cerebral trauma were inaudible, so too is this work. The choice of imagery from Dresden is a nod to its primacy in the place it occupies in the historical record, most obviously as the site of the devastating aerial bombing campaign during WWII. It is also referencing Dresden`s post-war history as a center of the cold war headquarters of the east German KGB/Stasi security services, notorious for their psyops, whose legacy continues today, largely unseen (and unheard it would seem). As a parable, foil and metaphor for the machinations of power and policy, this work is intended as a mute and disquieting presence, background noise.

Brad Todd is an artist whose works span several fields of inquiry, principally involving the research/creation of responsive environments which implicate technology as a mirror, filter and catalyst for experience writ large in both an individually embodied sense and its attendant broader socio-political context. Having received an M.F.A. from Concordia University (Montréal), he began playing music in the post-punk band Sofa, which released the inaugural album and single on the critically acclaimed Constellation Records label. From the generative and reactive to the composed and performative, audio and sound design continues to play a key role in his works. Brad has received numerous grants and awards and has exhibited his works in galleries and media festivals in North America, South and Central America, Asia and Europe, including the 3rd Beijing International New Media Art Exhibition and Symposium in Beijing, Eyebeam, N.Y., Paços das artes, Sao Paulo, Brazil, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, N.Y., ISEA festivals in Nagoya, Japan, Belfast and Hong Kong and Cynet art in Germany. Presently he is an instructor in the Design and Computation Arts program at Concordia University in Montréal.