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Hidden Worlds
Mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR) are designations for what are basically the same technological concepts for the production of inter-faces (in the true sense of the word interface, whereby facing means to look squarely in the eyes) between the real and the virtual, a technology that replicates physically dimensioned and digitally determined “spaces” within one another. In contrast to the term MR, which describes a method, augmented reality suggests, in thoroughly questionable fashion, the possibility of enhancement of reality through the “enrichment” of whatever one understands reality to be. (A German synonym for Realität [reality] is Wirklichkeit [actuality], which better captures the multi-layered nature of the concept of reality to the extent that it refers to effectuality, and thus something that is not per se accessible to the senses.)
The exhibition project Hidden Worlds refers to this idea of enhancement or augmentation via enrichment, even if only in the sense that reality has always constituted a sort of hide-and-seek game (between perception as the attestation of the senses and theoretical insight), the first condition of participation in which is dis/covery. Discoveries—moments when that which is not obvious becomes apparent—lead to a “reality” that is richer in actuality, interrelatedness and the comprehension of it. Seen in this way, augmented reality is a technology for the enhancement of reality through insight; it is—questionably in the sense of being worthy of closer scrutiny—a discovery of reality. Hidden Worlds encounters this questionable approach with humor. The focus is on the parallels between the sensorially oriented and the electronic world. Its conception of virtuality as a kind of world of spirits is thoroughly intentional: they lead a life of their own, to which one has access only when one is a medium or has one. Formulated is less mysterious terms—this has to do with the necessity of confronting the omnipresence of the digital world. At any rate, a life beyond a non-technological continuum ceased being a realistic option at the very latest by the invention of the radio and the first broadcast experiments over a century ago. Since then, and to an especially great extent with the advent of the realm of virtual data, we have been surrounded by what amounts to a second world that is being permanently generated by the “first” one and interacts with it. The intention of Hidden Worlds is to localize this world aesthetically, to make it accessible, and to give it a form.
Hidden Worlds also picks up where Print on Screen left off. This predecessor exhibition dealt with text and writing as a medium of interaction; Hidden Worlds shifts the focus to language and voice.
Hidden Worlds has been conceived and curated by Gerfried Stocker.
Realisation: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Project Management: Dietmar Offenhuber
Technical Implementation: Gerold Hofstadler / Exhibition Design: Scott Ritter
The exhibition was made possible by the generous support of SAP.
The Hidden World of Noise and Voice
Ars Electronica Futurelab/A, Golan Levin/USA, Zachary Lieberman/USA, Christoph Lindinger/A, Dietmar Offenhuber/A, Michael Breidenbrücker/A/UK, Gerfried Stocker/A, Robert Abt/A, Robert Praxmarer/A, Stefan Mittlböck/A The centerpiece of the exhibition is the multi-user augmented reality system The Hidden World of Noise and Voice—a round-table gathering of six users equipped with so-called see-through data glasses. The glasses allow for an unencumbered view of the real surroundings and the other participants, while also enabling virtual data to be fed into the user’s field of vision. In this way, the real situation can be augmented (optically enhanced, enriched, commented upon and interpreted). In this multi-user augmented reality system, sounds are converted into graphic information in accordance with both their tonal characteristics as well as their spatial sources. This means that the computer localizes, for example, a person snapping his/her fingers and visualizes by means of diverse algorithms and relational models a graphic analogue—for instance, in the form of a small explosion—on the hand of the person doing so. If someone makes a deep, indolent sound, this gets depicted as a sluggish, fat 3-D graphic—like a fat worm wriggling out of the person’s mouth. Abruptly pronounced sounds likewise evoke objects that correspond to them in form and behavior. Thus, the sounds—or rather their visual correspondences (avatars)—successively fill the previously empty space with a dynamic and lavishly realized world of computer graphics. This is not merely a matter of establishing a communications space into which one can toss words, so to speak; one is also placed in the position of being able to externalize the forms of sound that normally arise in our (resonating) bodies, and to impart a shape to one’s own voice.
There are also several observation units grouped around The Hidden World of Noise and Voice that enable non-participating spectators to watch the augmented proceedings.
Thanks to Malcolm Slaney and Christopher Wren
RE:MARK
Golan Levin The Hidden World of Noise and Voice has to do with sound and vocalization beyond their semantic nature; Golan Levin’s project RE:MARK, on the other hand, deals with the symbolic meaning of sounds, with that moment when the voice, through the formation of sounds, becomes a language—a system of symbols and signs. The human voice is our first instrument of communication. Phonographic writing systems—which transcribe speech into spatial forms for future retrieval and appreciation—fulfill many utilitarian needs but largely fail to capture the myriad dimensions of time, timbre and prosody that characterize this complex and expressive kind of sound. The fact is that speech is not merely an abstract semantic signal, but a spaceoccupying energy field as well. In RE:MARK, the volumes we speak are viscerally and interactively realized in dynamic sculptural forms, in an imaginative attempt to reveal the hidden world of spoken energy.
Six persons are seated around a table. The sounds they make constitute the virtual counterpart of this spatial situation. Sounds are transformed into three-dimensional objects and interplay and combine with the space of perception. Through the analysis of phonemes and language, the computer differentiates between noise, spoken letters, vowels or words and, on the basis of its interpretation, produces balloons (like in a comic strip) containing signs—for example, in the case of the word “auto,” the corresponding icon. The depiction is done via projection on a wall in front of which two people are seated facing each other and conversing. The balloons with their respective signs emerge from the shadows of their heads. Detached from the respective speakers, the forms pervade the space and are permeated by it. Only the group seated at the table witnesses this procedure; the simultaneity of the two worlds is revealed to the outside observer only by means of the alternating images, and it is up to the observer to overlay them with one another.
Realized with support of the Siemens Artist in Residence
Project at Ars Electronica.
Tool’s Life
minim++ (Motoshi Chikamori+Kyoko Kunoh) We are surrounded by various tools. We usually believe that a spoon is a tool for eating something and a comb is for combing someone’s hair. But don’t they have other purposes? Let’s explore in a house at midnight! There are tools on a tabletop in the moonlight. If you touch one softly, the shadow is transformed into various shapes. Even if tools don‘t change their own shape, their shadows may show their true characters.
In Japanese “kage” is the shadow that appears on the ground behind something that blocks the light; it’s the shade on a thing where light does not reach; it’s the silhouette that is projected onto a wall; it’s the “shadow” that symbolizes a thing’s very existence. At first glance, a “kage” may seem to be a mere imitation of a thing—that which projects only outline and external shape. But, at times, it can highlight the important aspects of a thing and reveal its intrinsic quality. In this respect, it is very much like a fragment of a memory that has already started to fade.
You will find a variety of “kage” on the table of Tool’s Life. You may even find a “kage” that you lost somewhere along the way.
Translated from the German by Mel Greenwald
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