Maxim Tyminko

Exploring algorithmic storytelling, Maxim Tyminko transforms the information of a visual sequence into a musical composition.

For this work, he has designed a javascript program that reads and performs, in real-time and in a random manner, a sequence of images created during ‘Place: an incomplete History’,  an on-line social experiment organized by Reddit in 2017. Using an online canvas and a 16-color palette, Reddit invited millions of users over the course of 72 hours, to produce an image that evolves in time. Only constraint: each user could only draw one pixel every 5 minutes. Promptly, people began to work together. The resulting image conveys a wide range of connotations, including political, social, and aesthetic.

In Tyminko’s work, each pixel is translated into a synthesized tone, producing a complex atonal musical composition. Placed with extreme care and being part of a bigger visual plan, each pixel, which has been scaled up into a colored square, becomes a picture in itself. The sequence of those ‘pictures’ produces a meaningful, yet abstract, story.

The piece is part of the online program of the festival “A Matter Of (In)digestions