Adam He – Looking Outwards 04

Steamboat Willie (1928), a famous Disney animation that demonstrates Disney’s earliest attempts toward animations with realistic sound.

Animation studios started putting background music and soundtrack into their animations in the 1920s and the 30s. With the Jazz Singer (1928) being the earliest form of “talking picture,” the sound technology got more acknowledged in the animation industry. Warner Bros. and Disney animations were the two biggest studios that sought to realize the sound of outside world into animations. One of the most famous works by Disney, Steamboat Willie (1928) introduced the world with synchronized soundtrack. It was so remarkable at the time that made this whole picture of Mickey Mouse whistling into the iconic symbol of Walt Disney Studio. The recording machines were enormous at the time that limited technicians to record the actual sound from the outside world. So Disney hired musicians, especially percussionists to imitate various sounds that imitate what is happening outside of their studio. With new computational technique in the music industry, people’s conceptions toward animations changed drastically.

Lingfan Jiang – Looking Outward – 04

‘Déguster l’augmenté’is a project done by Erika Marthins with ECAL (Bachelor Media & Interaction Design) which tries to add a sound dimension to food. I found this project very interesting because food is always about smell, taste and visual impression. Sound could really be a new dimension to think about.

It is quite interesting to see how chocolate and Oreo could be transformed into discs, but it is definitely still in its early stage in terms of accuracy. However, the accuracy could also be used as an advantage. For example, it could be used to test the quality of the food.

Xiaoying Meng-Looking Outward 04

(Food and Sound)

This project created by Erika Marthins and ECAL(Bachelor Media & Interaction Design) looks at food and other of our senses using the latest technology. The third proposal, in particular, explores other ways we can experience and “taste” sound. It is a record made of chocolate by Chef Fabien Pairon Ecole hôtelière de lausanne. The creators try to find the right texture for the chocolate record and the result is very intriguing. The chocolate completely changed the music recorded in the record. It is a different form of representation of the sound. Because sound is invisible, we cannot touch or taste or smell it. But by combining food and sound, we can now experience sound in other forms of senses. I find this project very inspiring. Using technology to experience sound can expand the dimension of it, making it visible, touchable.

Catherine Coyle – Looking Outwards-04

Vocaloid is a music program, its first commercial release being in 2004. This series of programs allows a music producer to create a fully voiced song all on the computer. The producer types in the lyrics they want sung as well as a melody and the program synthesizes a voice for the song so no real singer is involved in the process of creating the actual song. Each ‘voice bank’ originally started with a real singer pronouncing all possible syllables which then can be used over and over again to create a huge number of possible songs.

I don’t know much about computing to change sounds, but I would imagine there are certain factors that allow the program to change the pitch, vibrato, etc of each syllable. I just think it’s really cool technology, and could be good for those who want to make music but lack the singing ability.

Many of the voice banks have animated ‘personas’ which have led to a large fanbase for the program. You can see this illustrated below in vocaloid “Hatsune Miku’s” inclusion on the popular video game Just Dance.

Queen Miku performs her iconic song ‘PoPiPo’

Looking Outwards 04: Visual Sounds of the Amazon

This is a responsive artwork by Andy Thomas that visualizes the sounds of the Amazon he recorded. While this isn’t a rare concept, I think Thomas did a very good job with animating the 3D models and textures. The sound has adds a third element and extends the impact of the computer generated visuals, culminating in an extremely dynamic animation. https://vimeo.com/229927018

I really appreciate that the animation sort of became an animal itself simply through the natural feeling of the motion. It’s almost elastic in nature, thus even though the shapes take on an amorphous form, it still feels slightly familiar through it’s motion.

Dani Delgado – Looking Outwards 04

The sound related project I chose to research is Atlås: an “anti-game environment” that generates music by completing self-generated tasks. The “anti-game” means that the app will solve these tasks by itself, without any need for human input.

This app was created by Agoston Nagy, who wanted to question human cognition and “more broadly corporate driven automatisms and advanced listening practices” which have been ingrained in most people. Nagy created the app using primarily JavaScript (and p5js) and Pure Data to synthesize the sounds together. Learning that most of this digital environment was created using JavaScript – the same language which we are learning – was encouraging and exciting for me because it means that if I keep pushing myself, maybe I could create something as beautiful, seamless, and imaginative as Atlås.

A screenshot of the Atlas interface. Sound is created as the simple shapes appear in the background.

Above: A video showing a demo of the Altas app: you can see how the music is created and the included animations which build the landscape.

Alessandra Fleck – Looking Outwards 04 : Sound Art

One sound and computation project I found that I thought was interesting is the Reflector Distortion project by Carsten Nicolai. What I find most interesting about this project is the way in which the computational aspect is not transcribed visually on a screen but rather through the subtle moves in the water dish.

The premises of this project stem from inputting sound into an algorithm that then associates that sound with a pattern and then outputs that sound in the source of a low frequency sound that replicates that pattern in the water basin.

(on the image above, the art piece is set in a white box room with clean, neon white lights as the only source of light. There was much detail put into the room alone to ensure that the cleanliness of the exhibit and sound distortions is exhibited well)

Rather than exhibiting the sound in the form of music, this project focuses on the frequency of sound as a basis of art. Enable to clearly visualize these changes in frequencies, the art piece uses a low black basin of water with a line of white neon lights mounted on the ceiling above the basin to reflect the lines in the basin and male the sound changes visible.

Exhibiting sound in the form of art is a very interesting track for visualizing what is not seen on the computer. The algorithms that were used to create this probably dealt along the lines of transcribing direct frequencies to points of a curve, then using an algorithm similar to what is used in Trapcode soundkeys to take those curves and based on the level of frequency, then exhibit that curve at a higher or lower visual mode.

(the image above shows a detail of the sound basin with the neon white light reflecting off the surface of the water in the dish)

Carsten Nicolai – reflektor distortion from studio carsten nicolai on Vimeo.

Sources:

http://carstennicolai.de/?c=works&w=reflektor_distortion

12 Sound Artists Changing Your Perception of Art

Sean McGadden – Looking Outward 04

A Narrative on Creation

“MULTIVERSE – The eternal birth and death of infinite parallel universes”

This project was a site specific instillation in Borgo delle Colonne 28, Italy. In order to project a fantastical yet grounded opinion on the creation of the universe, the production team listed below used sound, algorithmic projections and reflection of materials to create the essence of infinite space and time.

Bonanni Del Rio Catalog (Production), Mattia Carretti, Luca Camellini (Art Direction, Executive Production), Mattia Carretti, Luca Camellini, Samuel Pietri, Riccardo Bazzoni (Concept), Luca Camellini, Samuel Pietri (Software Artists), Riccardo Bazzoni (Sound Design), Matteo Mestucci (Hardware Engineering), Fiera Srl (Setting), Matteo Torsani (Video Report) and Emmanuele Coltellacci (Photo Report).

These artist programmed both sound and visuals with the intent on exploring rational explosion and implosion of particles of various scales and speeds to imply the creation or destruction of “universes”. The production teamsprinciples behind this project were to explain how the universe can be constantly compounded within itself. The existence of black holes are referred to as moments of inception of new child universes. A vast complex system of layered parallel universes is tantalizing and inspiring to me. This instillation transmits a magnitude of reality that is hardly perceivable into a medium that gives a portal-like insight into the true scale of the universe. The way it also reflects off the ceiling and floor shows the infinite nature of the creation outside and within our own observable capabilities.

The images were generated with a program called openFrameworks and it serves as the “creator” of these universes. Just as creation remains within its own bounds, the generative sounds and shapes are within a similar family. However just as true creation is random there are random elements making slight changes in multiple factors. The sounds contribute to an overall essence of being and scale. The inception of possible universes is a magnificent and crazy thing to imagine due to the sheer size and time it might take.

Sean McGadden

Austin Treu – Looking Outwards-04

Multiverse by fuse* is a fascinating project including both generative graphics and sound. It utilizes the Multiverse Theories of physicist Lee Smolin that say that universes create new universes as opposed to collapsing into singularity as inspiration in that a new ‘universe’ begins every thirty minutes and inherits certain attributes from its ‘parent universe’ and those before it. The synthesized sound and constantly changing visuals invoke a sense of wonder about the cosmos and what is really out there. The division and consolidation that happen on the display symbolize the constant change that the Multiverse goes through, which is an incredible visual representation of something outside of our human grasp of space-time. One of the most interesting parts of the project that goes on under the hood is a direct interaction between openFrameworks and Ableton Live, which means that the sound and visuals are actually generated in tandem with one another, so, while each ‘universe’ is unique, it has matching visuals and sound that would match again under the exact same conditions. I am not only impressed by the wild physics of the modern day, I am impressed by this fantastic representation of it.

The following video is a three minute demonstration of the project.

Looking Outwards 4 – Sara Frankel

Caption: This is the sound file from Lucier’s project “I Am Sitting in a Room”. As you can tell, his voice becomes quite distorted by the end of the project as the recording has been layered on top of another so many times.

Alvin Lucier’s project, “I Am Sitting in a Room” involves his voice, a room, and a recording/stereo system. How he goes about this project is he simply records his voice in a room by himself. After recording a few sentences, he replays his voice through the sound system in the room and records that through his microphone and he continues to play and record the newly layered recording. He does this for 45 minutes. As the recordings become more and more layered, one starts to notice that his sentences are no longer coherent as they become more “echoed”. By the time one reaches the end of the recording, the voice has become completely distorted and if anything, almost harmonic. Listening to the voice at this point in the recording is almost meditative if anything due to the sound waves of his voice being layered on top of each other. I admire this project because it truly proves the point that music is everywhere and within everyone. There is music and harmonic sequence within the everyday life, even so close to us that is our voice.

For even more information, here is a link to his exhibit at the MoMA in NYC, NY: https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/01/20/collecting-alvin-luciers-i-am-sitting-in-a-room/