Currently, the Modular Rhythm Machine is composed of 36 modules. Each is conceived both as a modular construction piece and as a self-playing wooden box-drum. They are respectively equipped with a servo-motor attached to a stick and an ultrasonic sensor to detect people’s proximity. Its modularity allows for flexibility in shape, size and construction.

This project is funded in part by the Council for the Arts at MIT and by MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology.

For this work the Chinese character 「忐忑」（Figure1) was designed as a pictograph using the words 「上」 （Figure2) for “up” and 「下」（Figure3) for “down” over the word 「心」（Figure4) for “heart” to describe this feeling.

With a 40-channel speaker system, the setting of the speakers looks like a path resembling veins. All 40 speakers play the sound of the artist’s heartbeat. When the speakers start to play one after another they produce a range of various rhythmic and musical compositions. The heartbeat is the most important element in this work; however, it is not easy for the audience to hear, since it was designed as a triggering force rather than an audible element. The low frequency of the heartbeat causes the speakers to vibrate, which then triggers the kinetic installation to produce sounds.

V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media (NL)

The Summer Sessions pop-up exhibition shows a selection of outcomes realized through the international exchange of emerging talents within the Summer Sessions network. Summer Sessions are short-term residencies for young and emerging artists, organized by an international network of cultural organizations.

Each summer the partners participating in this network for talent development collaborate to offer professional production support and expert feedback to artists in the realization of a new artwork or design. Local talents from each partner’s geographic region are scouted and selected for a residency abroad, where they are offered highly productive atmospheres and specific kinds of expertise at one of the international partners in the international network. While the pop-up exhibition illustrates the kind of results that this pressure-cooker residency format results in, a live event will highlight the experiences that participants have had abroad, and the effects these experiences had on their early careers.

Credits

The projects are produced as part of the Summer Sessions Network for Talent Development in a co-production with Metamedia Association, Kitchen Budapest, Art Center Nabi, Arquivo 237 and V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media

The Physical Rhythm Machine

Philip Vermeulen (NL)

The installation is a closed system that shoots balls at up to 130 kilometers per hour to create sound patterns in extreme violence. The installation cannot only be seen as an instrument, which the artist can play live, but also as an autonomous system, which creates rhythms with the help of algorithms. It breathes the flavors of rough mechanics and the early experiments of the classical minimalist movement.

Emotion Hero

Ruben van de Ven (NL)

What does it mean to feel 48 percent surprised and 18 percent joyful? Over recent years new software has emerged that estimates what people feel based on their facial expressions. Emotion Hero is a project consisting of a game and an exhibition that encourage the visitor to investigate how faces and feelings are represented by this software. The central question is what are we looking at when we read emotion scores? Which leads one to wonder what we are looking for in these numbers.

Web Spaces

Jip de Beer (NL)

Web Spaces is an ongoing investigation into the structure of web pages. How can three-dimensional beings, like you and me, explore the virtual landscape of web pages? By rendering the building blocks of a web page in three dimensions, the architecture beneath its surface is revealed.

Origin: Sustained

Mischa Daams (NL)

Origin: Sustained is an audiovisual expedition into the abstract, organic universe that results from a feedback loop between an lcd screen and a video camera. A machine that controls the camera is composed to unfold a hypnotizing voyage of abstract patterns. This happens before the eyes of the audience, in real time. This evolutionary copy-process, where one image feeds and mutates the next, demands for continuation. So in order to sustain this loop, Daams has deployed a perception algorithm to look at and respond to the chaotic patterns that emerge. The machine as steersman is responsible for the unfolding and continuity of the light/life cycle, resulting in the film.
Origin: Sustained is commissioned by FIBER with the support of the Mondriaan Fund NL and Stroom Den Haag. The first automatic expedition ‘Origin:Cycle #1’ was realized as part of the Summer Sessions network in a co-production of Art Center Nabi and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, with support of the Creative Industries Fund NL.