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

The modular synthesizer keeps the musician at the heart of the proposal and controls the musical fluctuation. The stage design allows the audiovisual medium to deploy in space via a specific structure composed with four transparent screens and four points of sound diffusion. It offers to the public a quadrophonic and quadrascopic image for a total synaesthetic experience.

Credits

Co-production: Arcadi (Paris/FR), Stereolux (Nantes/FR)
Support: La Muse en Circuit (Alfortville/FR)

A specially designed and constructed drawing machine made of ball bearings and a customized pencil holder is placed in a wooden box and sent by post. While in transit, the analog machine captures the movement on paper.

At present the project includes several drawings of a journey around the world.

Titles of the drawings in the exhibition

Seoul—Linz—Seoul 20130409-20130514-20130601
Seoul—Taipei—Baden 20130620-20130805-20130823
Seoul—New York—Baden 20130730-20130821-20130904
Seoul—Vancouver—Baden 20130730-20130820-20130905

Courtesy of Gallery Gerken

Synapse is a multi-material 3D-printed helmet that moves and illuminates according to the wearer’s brain activity, while Bodyscape is a 3D-printed top that tracks human bodily movement using a gyroscope linked to LED lighting.

Credits

Synapse
Designer: Behnaz Farahi
Acknowledgements: Pier9 / Autodesk with special thanks to Paolo Salvagione
Director of photography: Nicolas Cambier
Photographer: Mitchell Strum

Bodyscape
Designer: Behnaz Farahi
Photographer: Kyle Smithers
Acknowledgements: USC, Media Art and Practices with special thanks to Samir Ghosh

While the specialized BA course may be relatively new, over time electronic and computer music has developed deep roots at the Anton Bruckner University. In 1995 Adelhard Roidinger initiated the Studio for Advanced Music and Media Technology (SAMT), which in 2008 was renamed in Computer Music Studio and has since been headed by Andreas Weixler. Since the university’s new building opened in 2015, students as well as researchers in computer music have had the opportunity to work in a cutting-edge studio infrastructure allowing production as well as presentation of multi-channel compositions.

The BA course in computer music and media composition (as well as the MA in musical composition) do not confine themselves to training young musicians in the skills necessary for the production of musical pieces based on set standards of the media industries. They encourage artistic exploration of potential new musical forms and practices in response to today’s rapidly evolving digital media landscape, which is constantly re-shaping our listening habits, lives, communities and societies.

The three installations presented at the POSTCITY, laying out sonic spaces rather than musical sequences, reflect not only this fundamentally open approach to the question of what musical art is or could be these days, but also the media composition course’s deep integration into the university’s other fields of study ranging from instrumental performance to acting and dance.

Text: Volkmar Klien

Magnetic Islands

Angélica Castelló (MX)

In an audiovisual installation, a woven tapestry made of cassette tape, a field-recording composition for two customized radios, the Vienna-based Mexican composer and sound artist Angélica Castelló reconfigures the sound and scenographic environments of religious and pagan traditions of altars that she has been exploring through the use of old radios and cassette players. For this exhibit she has created a memory blanket, a shield to protect us from oblivion, made precisely of cassette tape, a magnetophonic material. This flexible sculpture—a sort of seaweed of woven tape—is made by the artist in clear reference to the idea of texture, textile and magnetism. It refers to the immense patience required by the craft of weaving, essential to storytelling as well. The piece includes a sound composition that Castelló made with transformed field-recordings, radio waves and acoustic sounds amplified by two customized old radios—a sound emission of oceanic textures with an engrossing power that characterizes her beautiful and seductive work.

Credits

Commissioned by Constellations of the Audio Machine in Mexico for the CTM Festival in Berlin.

Text: Carlos Prieto
Pictures: Felix Blume

Anatomy of the Underground

Tobias Leibetseder (AT), Astrid Schwarz (AT)

The room oscillates. Four speakers generate a three-dimensional acoustic sculpture that opens itself through the movement in space and time. It is an almost haptic experience. By stimulating the natural frequency of the spatial modes, the place is almost set in motion.

The composition makes the stimulus frequencies move around as they follow the room-oriented modes accompanied by the visitors. Wandering through the space also becomes a walk through of the composition itself. The oscillation of the vibrations, the constantly changing frequencies and the interference become noticeable on one’s own body. It becomes the projection surface for the acoustic peculiarities. Architecture, surfaces and materials of the place flow into an anatomy of the underground in the shimmering of time.

Xuán

Lukas Jakob Löcker (AT), Roberta Lazo Valenzuela (CL), Yiran Zhao (CN)

Xuán is transliterated from either of two Chinese characters with the same pronunciation and intonation: 悬 means “hanging,” while 旋 means “spinning.” The title, in its ambiguous potential of different meanings, is representative of the piece as a whole. The objects of this performative installation comprise speakers and flashlights hanging with and under a transparent net of nylon string, giving the appearance of floating in space. The floor underneath is covered with a white projection surface to reflect the light from overhead. The performers in their motions trigger one another’s movements, initiate new movements in turn, as well as changes in already moving objects. Through the moving lights and sounds, the space is made ambiguous, as acoustic reflection and changing illumination alter the perception of volume and resonance.

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

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.

The assistive interfaces pursue the development of devices to enable people with physical and mental disabilities and/or immobility to talk, produce and teach arts—including three-dimensional scenery and sound. The theoretical basis is in studies on multimodality and multi-sensoriality originating from neuroscience researches.

All prototypes are developed from re-engineering, customization, low-cost technologies and open-source codes. The work of the scientists does not need high technology; on the contrary, they propose using old knowledge available to non-experts in order to allow broad access to create all kinds of art in a collaborative way.

Credits

Special thanks to Juntos Com Você (Together With You), a foundation for social crowd-funding who made it possible to collect the funds needed for this exhibition and to all donors who made this campaign a success. Thanks also to the PPG in Arts of the Institute of Arts of UNESP, the FAPESP, CAPES and the CNPq for the research grants provided to the members of the GIIP. Thanks are also due to FAPESP for their aid to be part of the trip for this event.

It should be emphasized that without the research by Efraín Foglia, Ana Amália Barbosa, Renato Hildebrand and Daniel Paz, in the first phase of the assistive interfaces project, as well as Samara Andressa Del Monte and her family, it would not have been possible to develop and analyze the current state of the research.

Research Groups:

GIIP—International and Interinstitutional Group for Research on Convergences between Art, Science and Technology, Arts Institute, State University of São Paulo (UNESP)

Director: Rosangella Leote

cAt—Research Group Science / Arts / Technology, Arts Institute, State University of São Paulo (UNESP)

Directors: Milton Sogabe and Fernando Fogliano

Realidades—Research Group Realities: from tangible realities to ontological realities, School of Communications and Arts (ECA), São Paulo University (USP)

Director: Silvia Laurentiz

Design and Body Research Group, University Anhembi/Morumbi

Director: Agda Carvalho

Não se aproxime / Do not come closer

Dr. Rosangella Leote (BR), Fernanda Duarte (BR), Rodrigo Rezende (BR)

The handcuffed body of the performer is video projected, merging the naked form and the clothed forms and inviting the visitor’s approach. When approached, ultrasound sensors feedback the signal and the interactor modifies the image. The closer the visitor gets to the screen, the more the naked version of the performer blurs and disappears.

Collaborator: Miguel Alonso (BR)

Hatred Apparatus

Fabrízio Poltronieri (BR), Nicolau Centola (BR), German Alfonso Nunez (BR)

This apparatus connects to the web and automatically captures the comments of news-website users. Stored on a database, these are automatically posted on Facebook and Twitter in a randomized way. The intention of the play is not to condemn the comments themselves but instead to show them to the public in a setting detached from their original and usual context—the daily social-net stories.

RONIN—Wearable object

Agda Carvalho (BR), Edilson Ferri (BR)

This work of art proposes a reflection about human displacement (nomadic state) caused by conflicts and pressures inflicted to a group or individual, which are characterized by an apparent sense of disorientation in routes and movements. RONIN is a wearable object similar to an armour that shows information about the variation on these routes and movements on the surface of the clothing.

Collaborators: Ariadne Cordeiro, Lisete Carvalho, Wellington Moreira, Miguel Jacobut

Sopro / The blow

Milton Sogabe (BR), Fernando Fogliano (BR), Fabio Oliveira Nunes (BR), Soraya Braz (BR), Carolina Peres (BR), Cleber Gazana (BR), Rodrigo Dorta Marques (BR), Mirian Steinberg (BR), Daniel Malva (BR)

Sopro is energized by the audience through the force of them blowing into a propeller, which creates electrical energy that is again turned into the movement of tiny motors on water. The artwork is based on the use of a simple technological system: the poetics of the act of blowing and the use of primary scientific principles. This system in progress is conceived parallel to energy and sustainability issues, placing them in post-digital thinking.

Quem Sou Eu Se Não Você Em Mim / Who Am I If Not You On Me

Daniel Malva (BR)

This work consists of GIF sequences generated using machine-learning techniques, the results of a Google tool called Deep Style. The images used in this series were captured on a smartphone; later the software was applied 40 times to a self-portrait to create modifications of the original image, representing the traces left by these people within the artist.

Enigma 3.2—φ: Um Enigma para Gibson

Silvia Laurentiz (BR), Marcus Bastos (BR), Cássia Aranha (BR), Dario Vargas (CO), Lali Krotoszynski (BR), Loren Bergantini (BR), Sergio Venâncio (BR)

Phi is part of a series of interactive installations called Enigmas, whose poetic audiovisual systems perform aesthetic operations reflecting the issues raised by authors such as Flusser, Bergson and Gibson. The artwork uses webcams for a real-time sensing of the variance and invariance of light in the exhibition area. All the data collected through this process is translated into monochromatic lines and synthesized sounds.

Driftscope

Objective Passional Terrains

Lucas Pretti (BR), Tiago F. Pimentel (BR)

Driftscope is a helmet that feels the city. Equipped with a Raspberry Pi 3, two cameras (objective and subjective) and five environmental sensors, the wearable apparatus is triggered by the artist’s facial expression while walking around. The collected data accumulates a city “psychotopology”. The experience is represented in an interactive installation.

http://terrenos-apaixonantemente-objetivos.cc/

Filmattraktionen 1:04

Jorge Ribail (CU), Rodrigo Rezende (BR), Fabio Rodrigues (BR), Fernanda Duarte (BR)

The work is an interactive video installation in which a software edits and presents an approximately one-minute cinematographic sequence composed from a political quiz and answered by the interactor. The ultimate goal of this installation is for the organization of cinematographic discourse to equate to the processes that take place in the human cognitive system.

Immersive.architecture.generator_v17.07.03

Alexander Peterhaensel (DE)

The installation shows excerpts from a recording of a live interaction with the immersive architecture generator. It documents the user interaction with an audiovisual virtual environment which is playable like a musical instrument. The work is a virtual-reality application that allows the user to interact with an adaptive virtual architecture which responds to their behavior in real time.

Somewhat like being alive (Reality collider)

Rodrigo Rezende (BR), Lucas Gorzynski (BR), Fernanda Duarte (BR), Helimar Macedo (BR)

Somewhat like being alive (Reality Collider) is an interactive audiovisual work where the public has a small device (a gyroscope) generating data by its rotation and displacement. This data determines the images to be projected on the wall, as well as several of its properties and the sounds to be reproduced by amplifiers.

Sketch of Making art with the eyes spectacle

Dr. Rosangella Leote (BR), Nigel Anderson (BR), Daniel Paz (BR)

The pocket performance consists of the interactions between an assistive technology interface (an eye-tracker device developed in GIIP: the ARTIA.V) that is used by the public, a dancer with trackable tags on the body and live sound composition. The work will show part of the dance spectacle Making art with eyes presented in Brazil (2017).

Teclaut

Dr. Rosangella Leote (BR)

Teclaut is a fully adaptable analog input interface that can be used by people with a range of disabilities – especially in cases of cerebral paralysis and locked in syndrome – as long as any part of the body can be moved to interact with the device. Its social potential is vast. Teclaut is highly customizable and requires about an hour to set up. It can also be used for a class activities in schools or as support for literacy.

ARTIA Project

Dr. Rosangella Leote (BR), Rodrigo Rezende (BR), Rodrigo Dorta (BR) and Daniel Paz (BR)

ARTIA.V is an interface that uses eye tracking to produce and teach arts. In the future the following areas will be supported: 2D and 3D drawing and painting, sculpting via 3D printing, photography and communicating in writing, and speaking by sound bank or via reading / automatic text recognition.