20 Etudes for 20 Etudes

Twenty real-time parameter-driven visualizations for Philip Glass’s Twenty Etudes for Piano performed by Maki Namekawa

The visualizations can be considered as etudes themselves, exploring visual and time-based relationships between basic topics like pattern and form, symbol and language as well as time and space, motion and position. Most of the pieces work with real-time-generated CGI, with a strong and immediate response to the music based on a comprehensive analysis of the audio signal from two microphones close to the piano. Some are combinations of CGI with photography or video and two use only video but with variations in the playback speed and the triggering of cue points controlled by the live music.

The visualizations, quite like the etudes themselves, have not been developed in their numerical sequence, but when we started to perform the complete etudes most visualizations were modified and some were completely remade to create a more intuitive flow.

The complete set of all twenty visualized etudes was premiered in February 2017 at National Sawdust, New York.

The concept was developed out of three different areas: the application of sound in medical science, coronary artery bypass surgery, and machine learning. The performance is based on the assumption that in the near future a surgeon will work with an advising machine while in surgery.

The installation is built using the performer’s real heart from MRI scans, enlarging its actual size. It is designed to interact when the performer plugs in audio cables and bridges connections, as is the case in coronary-artery bypass surgery. During the performance, the storyline is led by the sound, the mixed video of medical images and the live performance from the webcam. The video and the sound not only lead the storyline but also present the machine, which gives instruction to the performer as a physician. The patient (the heart) being operated on symbolizes human consciousness and faith. The performance poses the question: If machines can reason even better than humans, will we as humans lose some abilities and not even believe ourselves anymore?

Credits

This project was realized in cooperation with Fraunhofer MEVIS and Ars Electronica Futurelab (Peter Freudling, Erwin Reitböck).

We’re incredibly complex, trillions of moving parts. But they’re all non-miraculous robotic parts.” Furthermore, today’s AI is a creation of man in his own image with a possible evolution towards the Super-AI. Inside such a loop of creation and design, religion finds its way to establish itself and become respected as a god, still observing but preferring to keep its distance and not intervene directly.

Monastic Vowels of a Computational Kind is an interactive installation augmenting the POSTCITY with an imaginary soundscape of a temple of unknown times, but serving a Super-AI-created religion communicating through sonic attraction. Various themes such as the “great flood”, “angel”, “redemption” are offered within soundscape compositions through interaction with the installation space.

The visitor uses the dedicated iPhone app to reach the sonic imprints of this temple. Their perceptual experience continuously oscillates between the realm of the current installation space and the augmented apparitions of the temples within that space, depending on the positional information, orientation and the angle at which the iPhone is held.

The graphic icons distributed at various locations in the installation space are informative as points of interaction for the visitor. Their design emerges as a mixture of the “Utopian” alphabet and the “Aurebesh” alphabet letters.

About the artist

Sinan Bökesoy (TR) is an artist, composer and software developer, who has continued his education, academic activities, and international career for many years in Paris, France. He received his PhD from University of Paris under the direction of H. Vaggione, and his music compositions on micro sound synthesis, performances with robotic instruments and softwares he developed such as the Cosmosf are well known. He is the founder of sonicPlanet and sonicLAB , developing products on advanced sound synthesis and sonic augmented reality applications supported continuously with artistic activities.

Read more: starts-prize.aec.at.

This project is presented in the framework of the STARTS Prize 2017. STARTS Prize received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.

The work pursues intimacy and sensitivity through intricate miniature components and layers of diffusive, hovering material close to the scale of a human body. Sentient Veil is composed of digitally fabricated cellular textile lining floating over the ceiling surface of the gallery. The work is composed of finely detailed interlinking skeletal components containing distributed computational controls with soft LED lighting and whispering interactive sound functions. Movement of visitors within the space triggers choruses of whispering responses emanating from miniature custom acoustic resonators integrated within the fabric of the sculpture. Glass vessels containing chemical protocells and carrying interactive LED lighting are also integrated within the sculpture.

The work contains textile-like details that respond to iconography within a religious painting by the 15th-century ltalian master Fra Angelico, located within an adjacent gallery. A direct dialogue with adjacent paintings, where the hybrid new fabric of the sculpture, carrying ambivalent, alien synthetic qualities, resonates and enriches the subtle meanings of traditional fabrics seen within the painting of nearby masters.

Hardware

Sentient Veil’s structure is composed of thermally expanded and laser cut acrylic diagrid spars that provide substantial strength while at the same time retaining flexibility, suggesting that the structures are capable of handling architectural-scale forces. Tensegrity coupling is featured, employing metal rod cores that stabilize the system. This structure offers minimal material consumption. Borosilicate glass and Mylar populate the acrylic canopy, adding density.

Embedded within this structure are distributed infrared sensors that sense external movement generated by the audience as well as its own internal actions. These sensor networks provide feedback between controls and kinetic mechanisms while generating kinetic movement in actuators. Modulation systems in the environment are controlled by Teensy boards running off of the popular open source Arduino platform. Fed by data received from sensors, these custom­designed boards in turn communicate over custom-designed cabling, while running the software that generates complex behavior in actuators. The combination of computational and physical systems creates substantial complexity and unpredictability. For example, interactions with sensors at one location influence the behaviors of actuators both locally and globally.

Software

Sentient Veil’s software is structured as a modular hierarchy, consisting of a low-level layer and a high-level layer. The two layers are connected physically through USB. A low-level layer of firmware written in C++ runs on Teensy 3.2 USB-based development boards, which interface with peripheral boards connected to actuators and sensors. High-level software written in Python runs on a Raspberry Pi that provides flexibility for development, free from the limited processing power inherent to the Teensy microcontrollers. Software controls the interactive components of the installation including interactive LEDs and soundscapes.

Credits

Philip Beesley Studio: Gabriella Bevilacqua, Adam Francey, Joey Jacobson, Nicole Jazwiec, Salvador Miranda, Reza Nik, Jordan Prosser, Filip Vranes

Collaborators:
Augmented Reality: Katy Borner, Andreas Bueckle
Engineering: Rob Gorbet, David Kadish, Dana Kulic,
Sound Design: Alex Young
Sponsors: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, University of Waterloo

Photo: ©PBAI

Über den Künstler

Philip Beesley (CA) is a practising visual artist, architect, and Professor in Architecture at the University of Waterloo. Beesley’s work is widely cited in contemporary art and architecture, focused in the rapidly expanding technology and culture of responsive and interactive systems. His Toronto-based practice, Philip Beesley Architect lnc., combines the disciplines of professional architecture, science, engineering, and visual art. The studio’s methods incorporate industrial design, digital prototyping, instrument making, and mechatronics engineering.

Lesen Sie mehr auf: starts-prize.aec.at.

This project is presented in the framework of the STARTS Prize 2017. STARTS Prize received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.

The acoustic emissions of a tree in the Swiss Alps were recorded with special acoustic sensors, and all other non-auditory ecophysiological measurement data were sonified–that is, translated into sounds and music. The recordings and sonified measurements were implemented in a number of different media art installations under the preamble “treelab“, which at the same time served as a research environment, in order to display and examine the temporal and spatial connections between plant sounds, physiological processes, and environmental conditions in an artistic­scientific observation system.

Most of the sounds that occur in a plant arise due to drought stress. Thirsty plants make an inaudible noise; acoustic emissions from plants lead to conclusions on their state and on the environmental conditions. During our research project it became clear that our observation system could make another fundamental phenomenon tangible: namely, how plants in Central Europe react to ever-longer periods of heat and drought in the course of climate change. The reconstruction and staging of the life processes and environmental conditions of a tree in an artistic-technical environment has led to new forms of observation and artistic design with an innovative instrument: correlations of measured values and patterns in natural processes become aesthetic effects–abstract measurement data are reflected in images and sounds. The intention of our observation system is to create an all-encompassing experience from complex data sets, and thus to draw a holistic picture of the life processes and environmental conditions of a tree that is under pressure from changing climatic conditions.

Credits

Sonification and artistic realization: Marcus Maeder, Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

Scientific data and analysis: Roman Zweifel, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)

ICST members of staff involved: Philippe Kocher, Jonas Meyer, Thomas Peter.

Conception lmmersive Lab: Jan Schacher, Daniel Bisig, Martin Neukom, Philippe Kocher (ICST).

Supported by Swiss National Science Foundation SNF, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL.

About the artists

Marcus Maeder (CH) is a sound artist, researcher and composer of electronic music. Maeder studied Fine Arts in Lucerne, Switzerland and Philosophy in Hagen, Germany and is currently pursuing his PhD in Environmental Systems Sciences at ETH Zurich. As a researcher at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) of the Zurich University of the Arts, Maeder is working on Data Sonification, Acoustic Ecology and Bioacoustics and artistic investigations of ecological processes and phenomena that are related to climate change and environmental issues.

Roman Zweifel (CH) studied Biology at the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich, where he gained a doctor’s degree for his ecophysiological work The Rhythm of Trees. He works as a senior researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and runs the private company natkon.ch, selling measurement equipment and expertise for ecological research. Roman Zweifel has strong expertise in tree physiology and electronics and his career is characterised by interdisciplinary and free-spirited projects.

Read more: starts-prize.aec.at.

This project is presented in the framework of the STARTS Prize 2017. STARTS Prize received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.

The interactive elements enable visitors to use eye control to navigate through the museum and access additional information about the works of art they are looking at. High-resolution 360-degree video sequences are combined with a 3D audio narration, which provides an immersive experience in text and image as well as with spatially variable sound. Users can select from among three narrative strands. They can thus determine the storyline themselves as they move about among the works of art. A complete round trip through all the museum’s galleries and collections of antiquities as well as an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the conservators’ workshop—Österreich Werbung’s VR production delivers total immersion in the collection of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Ten participants were included in the project, with a mix of genders and a variety of sexual identities. The vibrators pulse in time with the sounds sent to them. The participants made noises in response to, and in time with, the sounds they heard. These ten recordings were then synchronized with the original composition and mixed back into it.

Almost there. not only explores the notion of the erotic, but appears to create something uniquely erotic in itself, continuing the artist’s exploration of complex emotions. The physical form of the release was constructed to reference the ephemeral nature of sexual experiences, likening it to the process of buying oneself flowers. An empowering gesture, but ultimately fleeting.

Credits

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

www.toddanderson-kunert.com

Participants can do Q&A with pros and get an up-close-and-personal look at a mobile radio studio

The audience exposed to visually enticing experiments will become part of the artwork. The responses of viewers attempting to piece together the narrative of experiments will be captured and integrated into the visuals and soundscape, gradually adding to the interpretation of activities. The laboratory will feature ongoing experiments such as in vitro fertilization of sea urchins, DNA manipulation, column chromatography of blood lysate, thale cress somatic embryogenesis and light-directed manipulation of the protozoan euglena, and will combine with algorithmic processing.

Credits

Authors: Roland van Dierendonck (NL), Špela Petrič (SI), Günter Seyfried (AT), Miha Turšič (SI), Slavko Glamočanin (SI)

Production: Waag Society (NL)
Support: Future Emerging Art and Technology, Ars Electronica

The work explores the idea of an audiovisual time object where shape, time and sound interact with one another. The main focus of the piece are the structures that emerge from the force field that pulls such objects towards two opposite extremes—tidy pre-composed order or generative chaos. The situation reflects the id-ego-superego model, which represents the conceptual background. Just as the ego is established in between the two groups of conflicting forces that constitute, distort, constrain or disperse our subjectivity, so too is the material of Capillaries Capillaries. Throughout the piece we observe the behavior of one and the same material from different perspectives.

Credits

Special thanks go to: Dr. Alex Harker and Prof. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay for being absolutely amazing PhD mentors; Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM), University of Huddersfield, for awarding me a Denis Smalley Scholarship in Electroacoustic Music; the Ministry of Culture Slovenia for awarding me a scholarship for post-graduate studies abroad.