‘Nativity’ is intended as a thorough investigation of the techno-logical architectures and sociocultural connotations of home entertainment devices from around the early 00’s - but specifically, DVD players and projectors.
 

Presented through the lens of biblical allegory (in a recreation of a children’s nativity play, or the static depiction), the work aims to highlight some latent symbolism or aspirational component in
the compact disc that associates it with the biblical narrative.
The compositional structure of the work is inherited from its objects and media; the projectors’ physical properties and the videos’ syntax determining the visual/videographic form, the DVD/CD players’ determining the auditory. The devices are conspicuously employed as instruments, operating in both a visual and auditory sphere and beyond their typical functionality.

All audio material in the work is ordered according to data-encoding methods in the CD/DVD; for example, eight-to-fourteen modulation (EFM), and ‘non-return to zero inverted’ (NZRI) encoding are determinant in the frequency and harmonic structure, whilst cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon codes (CIRC) and the CD frame structure are used for temporal ordering of elements and generating syncopation structures.
 

Video material is formally arranged according to MPEG/H.264 procedures or forms: including discrete cosine transform (DCT), Exponential-Golomb coding, context-adaptive variable-length
coding (CAVLC), scan patterns, and others.