Archive for October, 2006
Colour by numbers is a 72 meters high light installation at Telefonplan in Stockholm. "A tower stands at Telefonplan. Austere, slim and dark; rising towards the sky like an exclamation mark. A tower is an archetypical creator of place: it breaks in and becomes an event in a continuous landscape. This characteristic is emphasized by the illuminated windows of this particular tower – but the patterns and colours also vary constantly. The tower speaks in a sign language composed of light. But what is the tower at Telefonplan saying, and who gives the architectonic form meaning?". On the website under live video you can see a live video image of the tower and also read instructions for how to control the light installation over the phone.
Until November 5 the video image is also projected on the façade of the Culture House in Stockholm, as part of the exhibition "Stockholm
bygger ".
Colour by numbers is a collaboration between the artist Erik Krikortz, the architect Milo Lavén and the interaction designer Loove Broms.
thanks to Loove for the tip
October 31st, 2006
The Laser harp by Jen Lewin, Blue Ink Studio is playing with the relationship between the physical and the digital, the virtual and the real. The "Laser Harps" is an immersive instrument and installation using movement and laser light to trigger sound. On her website she explains: “The use of light instead of a physical string plays with our perception of space and matter. What is physically not there (the virtual string), responds as if it were”.
via wmmna
October 23rd, 2006
Douglas Irving Repetto is an artist and teacher. His work, including sculpture, installation, performance, recordings, and software is presented internationally. He is the founder of a number of art/community-oriented groups including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website. Douglas is Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center. Here are a selection of his own projects that I especially like.
Foal
‘Foal’ was developed when the organizers of Festival Rümlingen 2005 asked Douglas to exhibit his earlier piece ‘Horse Table‘. Instead he chose to build a new version of the table, this time in the form of an awkward foal, or baby horse table. The foal knows even less about the world than its parent, and spends most of its time blindly moving its legs every which way in a largely futile effort to explore the world.
See Video
Slowscan Soundwave
Slowscan Soundwave is a series of pieces that attempt to create simple physical manifestations of complex physical, biological, and social phenomena. Sound travels through open spaces via the compression and rarefaction (expansion) of air molecules. For example, as the head of a drum vibrates, it pushes and pulls at the air around it. That pushing and pulling creates areas of higher and lower air pressure, which propagate out from the source in waves.
Slowscan Soundwave 1 uses a microphone to sample the ambient air pressure in its environment. It then uses those samples to change the alignment of seventy nine suspended plastic sheets in an attempt to create a visible analog to those constantly changing pressure fronts. Even the simplest of sounds is too complex, and changes too quickly, to be accurately represented by plastic sheets slowly moving this way and that. As a result the patterns formed by Slowscan Soundwave are a crude approximation of those formed in the air.
Slowscan Soundwave 2 much larger version of the work consisting of ten giant suspended strips of transparent mylar. They overlap to form a radial pattern. Each strip is attached, via a string, to one of two small motors. As the sound changes the computer changes the speeds of the motors. One motor’s speed is tied to the volume of the sound in the space: as the volume rises, the speed of the motor increases. The other motor’s speed is tied to the frequencies present in the sound: as the predominant frequency rises, the speed of the motor increases. “Since the mylar strips are transparent and were hung about 60 feet above the audience, their effect was very subtle. At times it was difficult to even see them, while at others they would catch a bit of ambient light and then shimmer gently, causing water-like refractions and reflections. The effect was a bit like shouting into a pool of still water: subtle but definite reactions to changes in ambient air pressure.”
Slowscan Soundwave 3 was a further iteration made of five 15′ tall columns of transparent mylar strips hanging from the ceiling and two long swoops of mylar cutting a V across the room. continues exploring the idea of making difficult to perceive phenomena a little more perceivable, while attempting to preserve some of the the subtlety and beauty that make the phenomena compelling in the first place. Douglas explains, “Here I was thinking a lot about the way sounds travel, and in particular the idea that when a sound happens in one place it has repercussions throughout the space. So when a truck goes by the front window and makes a BANG! as it bounces over a pothole it not only changes the air pressure where human ears are listening, but also causes vibrations in the remote corners of the room. The zigzagging twine connections between motors and mylar, and the placement of the motors as far as possible from the mylar they’re vibrating, are attempts to get at these ideas. See Video
puff, bang, reverb
There is a grid of small wooden blocks hanging from the ceiling of the space. Each block is attached to the ceiling via a piece of monofilament (fishing line) and hangs about 6" above the floor. In the middle of the grid are two motors, each with a short length of wood attached to its shaft. Hanging in front of the grid at mouth height are two wooden panels. The panels are air-activated switches — when you blow on them they turn on the motors. When a motor spins it strikes the surrounding blocks of wood. Those blocks in turn strike their neighbors, which then strike their neighbors, and so on. The spinning motor acts like an impulse, injecting energy into the grid of wooden blocks. As the blocks knock into one another that energy slowly spreads throughout the grid.
This is roughly analogous to what happens when you blow, clap, or otherwise introduce a sudden burst of energy into the air. Your action displaces air molecules, causing them in turn to displace their neighboring molecules. This action reverberates though the air, transmitting the energy from your action to distant parts of the space. puff bang reverb is a semi-accurate, two-dimensional hyper-zoom into the secret life of displaced air molecules.
October 20th, 2006
Super Cilia Skin by Hayes Raffle, Mitchell Joachim, & James Tichenor is a tactile and visual system consisting of an array of actuators that are anchored to an elastic membrane. These actuators represent information by changing their physical orientation. See Paper
Each actuator is a felt-tipped rod with a magnet at it’s base. The rods are anchored to a silicone membrane with two plastic nuts. These actuators oscillate in response to a magnetic force below the surface of Super Cilia Skin. This force alters the angle of the actuators on the upper surface. The prototype of Super Cilia Skin was designed to be operated by the Actuated Workbench which uses a computer to control an array of 128 electromagnets, smoothly moving magnetic objects on its surface.
See Video
Applied on an architectural scale, Super Cilia Skin would act as a display surface reflecting changes in local or global conditions. On a smaller scale, an object surrounded by Super Cilia Skin might propel itself across the floor or be able to propel objects across its surface. via Karen at Mr. Watson
October 18th, 2006
Imagine a physical sculptural version of a dynamical system in 3d space or a complex particle simulation, the kind that appears as a floating gas vapour. Using a technique called ‘chromastrobic light’ Paul Friedlander conjures spectacular light sculptures that are the ultimate incarnation of the late 60’s light-show aesthetic bought into the now. They also sit nicely in the lineage of waveform art – everything from early artist experiments with oscilloscopes – Laposky, Whitney, Bute et al to recent computational art concerning attractors, particles and Bezier acrobatics.
The work ‘Dark Matter’ appears as a 3 dimensional iridescent waveform, the result of chromastrobic light projected onto a rapidly spinning rope reflected off a Mylar mirror (flexible mirror surface). Because the rope spins at up to 600 rpm the human eye perceives a three dimensional multicoloured image. It doesn’t stop there – spectators can interact with the piece via two high frequency sound beams which alter the speed of the rope’s vibrations and the colour of the light.
Freidlander’s most recent installation, Timeless Universe concerns itself with the alternative cosmological ideas of English physicist Julian Barbour. 10 different kinetic pieces are arranged in groups illuminated by projections showing images from 3 different computers all generating real-time animations that modify, modulate and transform the chosen subject matter.
videos of his earlier work
Its comes as no surprise that Friedlander was an acolyte of the original psychedelic light shows scene the first time round – he built his first light sculptures while a physics student at the University of Sussex before graduating in 1972. via dataisnature
October 16th, 2006
Adam Richards Architects have designed a wind breaker with a difference. Created for a priest to shelter him whilst writing sermons on his roof terrace in central London, this project is conceived as an electronic Annunciation. An undulating screen of woven stainless steel mesh veils a continuous wall of blue polycarbonate panels held in a steel frame which is cantilevered from the building’s roof structure. In the morning the stainless steel blazes with reflected sunlight, whilst in the afternoon natural light causes the polycarbonate to glow blue through the mesh.
At night the polycarbonate is illuminated by hundreds of light emitting diodes integrated into the frame. These are linked to a Geiger Counter, which has been tuned to detect cosmic radiation, the fluctuations of which are registered as pulsing waves of blue light moving across the wall like the aurora borealis.
Sensors detect the movement of people near the screen, translating it into an electronic shadow in the LEDs. In this way the human and cosmic realms are brought to visibility within the same frame, which in turn embraces the space of the terrace whilst revealing the distant skyline of the city.
October 13th, 2006
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