The interdisciplinary research is based on experiential investigations. The results are presented in form of experimental prototypes such as LightScale II or lead to professional creative projects such as SINGULARITY, which was developed with the choreographer and Assoc. Prof. Carol Brown.

http://www.arc-sec.com
http://www.carolbrowndances.com

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.

This instrument was based on the wild idea: “what if the god of electric guitars, Jimi Hendrix, were to play the electric fan as an instrument?” A light source and a guitar strap are attached to the electric fan and the fan’s blades are replaced with original disks with holes in them. The instrument is played by rotating the fan, where the flashing light created by the blades is picked up by a photosensitive device. The resulting electric signal is turned into sound and by calculation the holes in the disk create different scales.

The player carries the Sempookin upside-down – the left hand controls the photosensitive device and the right hand controls the rotation of the fan. Switching the fan strength, high/ medium/low, leads to transposition. The player will be swinging the neck! Once, the mass-produced electric fan was the key to post-war reconstruction in Japan. Now the player has created a deformed rock band by carrying the electric fan upside-down.

Credits: Ei Wada + Nicos Orchest-Lab
Technical Support: Rinichi Washimi, Yusuke Takei (Nicos Orchest-Lab)
Promoter: NPO Topping East

A parallel can be drawn to the notion of conscious identity, the notion of an “I”. An individual being is what it is wholly onto itself, but when something as complex as consciousness appears then there is necessarily a system of interconnected characteristics that make up the “I”. The performance explores this concept in practice. It uses a physical installation with a simple Platonic geometry to act as a prism, into which passes the concept of an “I”, which is then split into four parts—movement, sound, speech, and sight—to illustrate a closed circuit of connection between them.

The movement is expressed through a dancer wearing VR goggles, whose task is to interpret the visual output of a visual artist, whose task is to interpret the words of a narrator, whose task is to interpret the sounds of a musician, who bases his improvisation on the movements of the dancer. A feedback loop thereby occurs, with the individual performer’s output becoming their input, filtered through the others.

Credits

Performers: JasKaran Singh Anand, Ben Olsen, Chris Bruckmayr, Bhoomesh Tak
Backstage: Klaus Dieterstorfer, Stefan Fuchs, Dietmar Peter, Heinrich Klambauer

Uwe Rieger (DE), Carol Brown (NZ)

Singularity s a two part performance blending data, dance, music and architecture in a 360-degree haptic-digital environment. Marked with tracking devices, three performers become an experiential interface, transforming virtual and physical movement into mutable architectural spaces.

Large 3D holographic constructions are interactively drawn and moved by the dancers in a space defined by a live-render program, motion-tracking cameras, projection, and haze particles. A digitally augmented world materializes as wormholes, kites, watery walls and magnetic particles. Audience and performer experience an intermixing of techno sound, movement and data through immersive transforming arcs of light.

Credits

Creative Directors: Uwe Rieger (architecture), Carol Brown (choreography)
Design and programming: Yinan Liu
Design and graphics: Ying Miao
Music: Jérome Soudan (Mimetic)
Performers: Zahra Killeen-Chance, Adam Naughton, Solomon Holly-Massey
Lighting Consultant: Margie Medlin

The project is supported by Creative New Zealand, and the University of Auckland.

Light as a reference to the soul and consciousness glows in a gelatin cube, thus at the same time serving as a source of information. While the light glows, people’s assumptions about the world are synthesized in an artificial neural network (ANN) and modified into a machine discourse. Mold (life) slowly grows over the fluorescent gelatin, until the light is extinguished and the metaphysical discussion ends.

Credits

Supported and produced by Us(c)hi Reiter— servus.at
Translation: Aileen Derieg
FIFO programming: Oliver Frommel
Supported by Kunstuniversität Linz

Thanks to Free/Libre Open Source Software, http://fsfe.org/

Partly funded by the Bundeskanzleramt Kunst & Kultur as part of the servus.at annual program 2017 and by Linz Kultur

The lack of wiring and the seemingly organic animation of the light induce a surreal, eerie scenery. Adapting a basic principle of physics, the installation becomes self-contained and is given a new level of artistic integrity that creates an uncanny, poetic situation.

Credits

www.marlenereischl.com

Supported by Kunstuniversität Linz

Lisa Buttinger uses the physical phenomenon of light refraction as her pictorial tool here. Two polarizing filters and cellophane foils arranged in different layers and angles transform the apparent nothingness into vivid colors, and the result is a unique spatial visual experience. The project seeks to animate people to rediscover their own childlike curiosity, to play and explore.

The project is presented during the Ars Electronica Festival in the POSTCITY.

The installation consists of a total of eight video projectors, which are subdivided into 630 sub-projections using 288 concave mirrors, and of forty audio channels that create a field of sound. In this third edition of the project, Kimchi and Chips again deal with the boundary between materiality and immateriality, reality and illusion, existence and non-existence.

With the title they refer to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity (in which space is not yet bent by matter, and superluminal velocity does not yet appear, as in the general theory of relativity formulated later).

Credits

www.kimchiandchips.com

Engineering: Chung Youngjae, Studio Sungshin
Sound Design: Pi Junghoo

In collaboration with Arts & Creative Technology Center

Commissioned by Asia Culture Center

Akinori Goto (JP)

Sculpture of Time is several works developed from the toki– series. Their creation started with the question of what it means to “move.” On one occasion Akinori Goto was impressed by the obvious facts that movement does not exist if time is standing still and that movement is possible due to the flow of time. In other words, time and movement are closely connected. This led the artist to the conclusion that the secrets of movement might become visible by pursuing “time”.

These works realize time, something that cannot be seen, by connecting two-dimensional movement to the third dimension through 3D printing. At first glance, it may look like just a cluster of white mesh, but the time that has been cut out can be reproduced by projecting light through the slits. By visualizing and actualizing time, not only do these works illustrate its relationship with movement, they also attempt to discover the beauty, characteristics and background connections of time born by going beyond dimensions.

Intention

Static symbols—numbers—are given time. They start to move windingly as though they are alive, in a way they can be seen as a single form of life. Furthermore, once a symbol with a meaning of its own is given fresh liveliness it is no longer about simple movement, but is felt as if an intention is created.

Progress

We expand ourselves by using technology longing for a better future. In doing so, we will not remain with our physical augmentation, but lead to enabling our multiple selves to exist on digital ground at the same time. Physical and digital will fuse in future times, and there will come a world without borders. By that time, there might be “the exact same me” with the same appearance and character, existing multiply in the real world. A world “I” am expanding. Where would the original “me” be, when that time comes? How would I be able to say that I am the real “me”?

Energy

This work is created from the movements the artist perceived as beautiful. As time and movement is strongly interrelated, the shape of time created from beautiful movements shall naturally be a time of beauty. This work consists of physical beauty generated by humans, in combination with the precise and elaborate beauty generated by machines.