Posts filed under 'Audio'
My recent work has been influenced a great deal by the work of Cybernetican Gordon Pask (1928-1996) from his interactive installations to his work with Architects Cedric Price, John Fazer and Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte. Its always interesting to see how Pask’s work continues to inspire a range of contemporary art work so I was inteersted to find out from Network Performance about Roots (2005-06) by Roman Kirschner. Roots is a world with a fluid atmosphere in a glass tank. Dark crystals grow trying to make connections. Constellations develop. They generate sound. And after some time they dissolve into clouds.The installation is based on the model of a chemical computers devloped by Pask.
Electricity is pulsed through the whole Sculpture. It is the key to the constant transformation. Growth changes the flow of the current. The modified flow changes the growth. Software and Hardware leave the next step to the material. The voltages at each wire are put through a resonance filter and thus transformed into sound. The 4/4 pulse results in a sublime rhythm. Movie of Roots (QT 10,73MB) This piece will be presented as part of Nature [of Man] exhibition.
October 22nd, 2007
“In the world of surveillance, the architecture of systems has effectively replaced architecture.” Eric Schuldenfrei
I was introduced to the work of Eric Schuldenfrei recently by Eyebeam Resident Jennifer Broutin. Schuldenfrei’s work focuses on the evolving relationship between animation, architecture, and art and has a diverse portfolio of projects that I couldn’t hope to all cover. Instead I will just cover one of his video pieces ‘Reciprocity‘ because of my own personal interest in reciprocal environments which I explored with my installation ‘Reciprocal Space‘. To look at more of Eric’s work visit his portfolio website.
Eric describes how “Theories of reciprocity… are used to describe relationships, mutually beneficial actions, situations of give and take, influence, correspondence, cause and effects within social structures. In reciprocity a relationship forms between those who operate and develop surveillance systems and those under surveillance.”
“Automatic digital collection systems and linked databases create highly contested spaces, raising questions of both security and privacy. Control is no longer conceived through building sections, plans, or perspectives, instead it is envisioned as a spatial construct in real-time, fully automated systems happening ubiquitously.”
February 25th, 2007
The SplineGraft project sets up a reactive environment in which sound dampening panels are continuously reshaped by a network of actuating devices, triggered by user movement. The panels are grafted into an existing environment, supported by structural racks allowing a range of different configurations. The SplineGraft can be set in different overall shapes independent of its behavior. The different parts are grafted onto each other; the profiled polyurethane panels are articulated by the configuration of the structural racks. The texture of this primary form is reshaped in real time by the control system integrated in the structural racks; a continuous form finding process with emergent patterning effects. In return, the spline ridges of the panels disperse these transformations horizontally.
Structure
The supporting structural racks are assembled from cnc-milled clear acrylic units, each integrating the actuating mechanisms, milled tracks for cabling and etched nickel brass conduits for inter-unit connectivity. The angle between each structural component can be set in five different positions, allowing the rack to be set at a convex or concave configuration, while maintaining conductive links between each part. Each rack of five units is controlled by a micro controller, steering the integrated actuators in the form of dual shape memory alloy wires. The central intelligence of each rack communicates with neighboring racks through radio.
SplineGraft behavior
The behaviour of the SplineGraft is controlled by a genetic algorithm; a computer program that simulates and compresses the geologically slow processes of natural selection to nanoseconds of computational time, in order to evolve solutions to specific problems. The Spline Graft algorithm is in this way trying to emit patterns of movement which stimulate occupation of the space it has been grafted in to. The matching of sensor readings and motor reactions in an apparently intentional way by the Spline Graft, transforms architecture into a cybernetic agent involved in the making and production of space.
SplineGraft materials
CNC-milled acrylic structural components with integrated wiring, machined polyurethane foam, etched nickel brass conductors, IR Movement Sensor, custom made PCB Cards, AVR Atmega8 Microcontrollers, Radio Modules, diverse electronic components, Flexinol® shape memory alloy actuators with protective Teflon tubes. SplineGraft was developed by Krets partners Pablo Miranda and Jonas Runberger. A full list of credits are available on the project website.
My thanks to Chris aka Pixelsumo for the tip.
February 21st, 2007
The NoRA structure designed by students of Architecture & Design, Aalborg University, was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale as an interactive architecture exploring how advanced architectural computing and sensor technology could attach the individual perception of place to temporary structures acting as agents for urban experiences. Architectural entities often closing up communication with the urban environment were questioned in a media architecture where the ‘capsules’ of urbanism contains a particular quality.
Excellent Paper that supports the Nora project and explores the ideas of Performative Urban Environments by Ole B. Jensen & Bo Stjerne Thomsen
Video of the making of Nora
In this way the moveable structure of NoRA embedded the potential for ‘in-between’ spaces to become new meaningful places and hence new types of ‘public domains’. This thinking leans on Performative Environments as a notion of what a building does instead of what it is, opening up for an urban architecture to be dynamic, open and facilitating self-organising, communicative environments for an organized complexity between flows of local interactions and network behaviour.
The design concept for NoRA was initiated through fluid dynamics software absorbing site characteristics as cultural movements, light and shadow into the organic mass. As a build structure NoRA was transported to the Island of San Servolo in Venice and programmed to release its variable sound and light scheme according to the movements of people around the building as well as a acting as a medium and stage setting for the users of the program facilities to project into the urban environment.
See Website
Here’s a full list all those involved, and my thanks to Bo for informing me of the project.
January 8th, 2007
Building Design Magazine (BD) has published an article by Elaine Knutt discussing the potential for telematic experiences to be constructed in public spaces by the use of interactive architectural surfaces. Telematics (tele-communication and informatics) broadly explores how communication has transformed our experience of social connectivity and new emergining patterns of communication and power structures.
visualisation of how a waterfall image would look projected on to Canary Wharf.
Thanks to this article I was pleased to find out about a new group of artists and architects called bodydataspace ( b>d>s) created by Ghislaine Boddington and Armand Terruli who are exploring ‘the integration of interactive and body-intuitive interfaces into public sites. Bodydataspace have proposed that Canary Wharf, London’s tallest building 235m, have a giant projected waterfall cascading down its facade. The waterfall would not be a computer generated animation but a real-time projection of Angel Falls in Venezuela. the world’s highest free-falling waterfall at 979m.
BDS’s entry to the Lift New Parliament competition was for an inexpensive demountable structure-cum-projection-screen. Audiences inside these mobile venues — in London and Namibia, for instance — could be digitally connected
Ghislaine Boddington is an artist, director, curator and presenter, a specialist in dance/performance and the evolution of body responsive technologies, virtual physical body networks and interactive interfaces. Previously Ghislaine was director and founding member of the London based sound/movement research unit shinkansen (1989-2004). Armand Terruli is an architect of fifteen years who has diversified his design output through interactive exhibition design, audio/visual work and into responsive environments. Over the years Armand has notably designed and project managed galleries at the National Maritime Museum, the Saudi Arabian Pavilion at Lisbon Expo 1998 and the Faith Zone at the Millennium Dome.
Body Data Space’s 3m diameter balloon acts as a projection screen for digital images. It is kept inflated by an integral fan at the top, but is supported by lightweight metal cabling.
November 6th, 2006
The Light Bead Curtain is an interactive musical installation that can be freely played by person’s touch. The installation takes the familiar form of a beaded curtain that consists of strings of simple clear beads. Each bead, on a users touch, lights itself and emits a unique sound. People play with the curtain by weaving their hands through it, touching it with their faces, and moving through it with their body. An environment of light and sound is created when people engage with the curtain. Although the curtain is primarily meant to be played with by a person, each bead is controllable and programmable via a computer. In this manner, the curtain can function as an interactive display.
The Light Bead Curtain is currently being developed by Ami Wolf and Jin-Yo Mok
November 1st, 2006
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