VIA: A collaborative project integrating mobile technology, video-dance and computer-assisted composition in Rio de Janeiro

We present the mobile art project VIA, which combined mobile technology, video-dance and computer-assisted music composition. Its main goal was to endow specific locations of Rio de Janeiro with video-dance and computer music performances, accessed through locative media. Summarily, any user equipped with a tablet or smartphone with an Internet connection had free access to multimedia pieces while moving through specific points of Rio de Janeiro. Two technologies were applied: QR code and HiperGeo. The music accompanying the videos derived from Computer-Assisted Composition (CAC), Computer-Generated Assistance (CGA) and ‘Sonification’-related approaches. The music can be interpreted as a sound iconization, based on a computational methodology and assisted by the software OpenMusic, of topological properties of the landscape used as background for the dance. At the end, we speculate on the consequences of a responsive mobile technology applied to art projects of investigative mapping of urban space.