Performanthropica is a meta-instrument: a generative system played like an instrument, in which the intensive handling of a set of interactive mechanisms produces a continuous visual stream that audiences experience as video art.
At its core, Performanthropica is an interactive generative system written entirely in Processing 4. It can be customised at the software level, offering a flexible platform for artists and performers to engage with it in their own ways. What sets it apart is its ability to respond in real time to the performer's gestures, captured by the computer's webcam, and to the keyboard, used to manipulate several functions and parameters. The result is a dynamic, ever-changing interaction between human and machine, in which each performance becomes a singular artistic expression that cannot be reproduced in its exact form.
Like Alchimia, Performanthropica has successive versions, and each one gave rise to a work of its own: Magnificatio Algarvensis (2023–2025), a performance by the Coletivo Algarve – Art Lab inspired by the Geopark Algarvensis, in which the system transforms textures built from photographs of the territory in step with live music; and Anacreontic (2024), a spoken-word performance on Robert Herrick's poem of the same name, developed during the Negentropy Nexus online residency.
