The spiral, conical surface has a geometrical axis that when printed as structure does not work as such, because its volume is approximately zero. Finally, it becomes extremely flexible and behaves like a balloon filled with water; however, it has no narrow parts. By making its layers wavy, the structure can change from a rigid to a flexible state. In the near future, when we make something we will be able to select structures just like we select material, and the integrated selection of structure and material will produce new artifacts that we cannot as yet imagine.

Credits

Designer: Kotaro Tanimichi
Project director: Shunji Yamanaka

Students on the BA course work in various formats, such as performance, sculpture, participatory events, robotic processes, sound and data. On the Erasmus master’s AAU semester, the students investigate the ontological effects of a culture of ubiquitous information. Both courses address the challenges to art (and any productive mode) in what Donna Haraway calls a “mixed-up time”, in which “Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places” (Donna Haraway, Staying With the Trouble, Duke University Press, 2016, p. 1.).

Through the problem-based learning methods, the students are encouraged to take the roads of knowledge production that are “less travelled by”; meaning that, to use Haraway’s phrase, they are asked to “stay with the trouble” of contemporaneity. How does technology transcend itself as mere means in our urge (re-)present, experience and contextualize art and culture?

Aalborg University (AAU)

Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark, has been providing students with academic excellence, cultural engagement and personal development since its inception in 1974. AAU is currently consolidating its profile as dynamic and problem-based research and an educational institution aiming at finding innovative solutions to global and complex challenges.

Seeds10110100

Cristina Palomares (ES), Melinda Varro (DK), Christine Hvidt (DK), Anna Major (DK), Daniela Maciel (DK/PT), Sidsel Abrahamsen (DK)

Seeds10110100 is a sound-reactive generative-art installation consisting of ecologies living together as a community, mimicking a living organism through light. They organize their community through interaction with the surroundings and according to a set of rules. The artwork changes its behavior depending on the level of interaction, seeking to demonstrate the continuous exchange of information between systems.

Sumbiophilia

Stefan Engelbrecht Nielsen (DK), Alberte Husted Larsen (DK), Karina Lindegaard Aae Jensen (DK), Louise Ørsted (DK), Maria Emilie Nielsen (DK)

Sumbiophilia is an “Association of Experimental Explorers of Symbiotic Existence” that investigates how it is possible for humans, nature, and technology to exist in a mutually beneficial manner. The association proceeds from an investigation of an abandoned area near Limfjorden in Northern Jutland through artistic experiments and explorations. Sumbiophilia aspires to find novel ways for humans to live with nature, moving away from the existing perception of how we organize our existence. We hope that our work will inspire others to join us in the exploration and encourage further investigation at other sites around the world.

Skin

Bas van den Boogaard (NL), Vibeke Thorhauge Stephensen (DK), Karina Lindegaard Aae Jensen (DK), Louise Ørsted (DK), Stefan Engelbrecht Nielsen (DK)

Skin is a morphing of old techniques and digital technology. It addresses the use and effect of modern technology by transforming insensible transmissions into a vibrotactile embodied experience. Skin uncovers the extent to which transmissions surround us when we step into the digital world; first encounters are left with an unsettling feeling of being surrounded in this new unknown territory. We lack the proper tools to get a human understanding, but with Skin our sensory apparatus is equipped for this.

Adjunct Infection

Shivani Anja Luithle (AU/DE)

Adjunct Infection explores the anxieties between the living and the technologically manipulative through boundaries of the cyborg and the organic, the impact of technology on our sense of self, and vulnerability to restraint and isolation in a society where we are no longer only extended physically but also mentally. These wearable sculptures aim to awaken our presence, and provoke intimate reflection and revelation, under the blind and distancing dependence on our everyday attachments.

A Universe of Memories

Gabrielle Maria Lepianka (DK), Sidsel Abrahamsen (DK), Matilde Nobel (DK)

A Universe of Memories is about the objects that you surround yourself with that have a certain memory or feeling attached to them. It might be an old bracelet or a coin, objects that do not necessarily have any obvious or material value but hold big sentimental value. Displayed in a giant mobile, the audience gets the opportunity to walk around in others’ memories and experience the sensation connected to the object representing them.

deadartist.me

André Mintz (BR), Olga Lukyanova (RU)

The project takes Internet politics as a central topic, reflecting upon it from the analogy of network as a trap. It does so through a web application that offers users a simple, futile web service that, in exchange for their Facebook data, shows them which dead artist they are a reincarnation of. Performing data collection, anonymization, analysis and presentation, the project aims at the playful defunctionalization of technology it is based on.

Suono Specchio

Ina Čiumakova (LT), Rodrigo Guzman S. (MX), Stefan Palitov (MK)

Suono Specchio (lit. sound or play mirror) is an interactive sound installation that explores the use of the face as a possible interface for musical expression. The installation consists of a one-way mirror with which the user interacts by gesticulating. Facial gestures are mapped to specific musical and poetic elements, which are played back to the user through headphones or speakers. Suono Specchio expands the expressive capabilities of one’s own face while at the same time posing questions regarding the phenomenological and archaeological significance of mirrors and reflective surfaces.

Memorial to Forgotten Sounds

Adriaan Odendaal (ZA), Karla Zavala (PE), Luis Bracamontes (MX), Sultana Ismet Jerin (BD)

Memorial to Forgotten Sounds is a pop-up exhibition that showcases neomaterial sound souvenirs created from the sound waves’ digital sound pieces that belong to forgotten or unused online archives, as a way to reactivate them. These sound souvenirs thus become mnemonic devices to respond to the era of ubiquitous contextual computing and the Internet of Things. It represents an exploration for alternative ways to improve online archival practices and the preservation of media arts cultures through mnemonic strategies for post-digital contexts. It is based on Wolfgang Ernst and Wendy Chun’s idea that archives consist not only in storage but also in memory and access.
https://memorialtoforgottensounds.tumblr.com

Encode

Jasper Fung (HK)

Encode consists of a hacked fire alarm and images of newspaper printed on a stainless-steel plate. The plate is connected to the fire alarm by electrical wiring, which forms a closed circuit. The fire alarm plays percussive patterns that are essentially Morse code/Chinese commercial code. These codes are derived from keywords from the popular Chinese social-media blogging site Weibo, which has been censored by the government of the People’s Republic of China.

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 sculpture performs a slow, meditative “dance” based on randomized algorithms, until a visitor steps to the control panel and gives (another) character to the piece. The artwork as a delicate example of engineering and robotics can form any shapes, and gives also an exceptional opportunity for the visitors for self-expression, getting into interaction with each other, or just meditating over the beautiful movements.

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

Her transdisciplinary examination of the dust filtration capacity of flowers consists of three parts:

1. Field research

The dust of seven flowers that grow wild in Linz directly next to streets with heavy traffic is collected and analyzed using light microscopy to determine the type and amount of dust particles.

2. Representation

Tiny details from historical illustrations of plants are digitally “grafted” together and engraved in plates. This illustrate how the graphical representation of these plant species has developed over the last 350 years.

3. Modeling

Sculptural prototypes based on the micro-morphological features of the dandelion (taraxacum) are made from materials from today’s consumer society. Current atmospheric dust levels are measured with integrated instruments and the obtained data is made freely accessible.

Credits

artoland.wordpress.com/2016/06/28

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.