Victoria Reiter-Looking Outwards-01

Meandering River

 

 

 

 

Snapshot of image generated by the “Meandering River” project

Meandering River is an audio- visual installation put on display at the Funkhaus Berlin Sound Chamber between July 28 and July 30. Its designer is the Berlin-based studio for art and design onformative, which markets itself as existing at the boundary of art, design, and technology.

Meandering River features a visual presentation across multiple suspended screens, which is created in real-time as a reaction to an AI-generated audio soundscape. Berlin music group kling klang klong is credited with the initial inspiration of the music, by recording their interpretation of a soundscape inspired by the natural flow of a river. However, the soundscape utilized in the installation is actually composed by a computer, which used machine learning algorithms to “‘look’ not at the visuals but the raw data behind the visualization.” The main goal of onformative’s installation is to “create a ‘unique awareness of time,’ drawing us into what the studio describes as an ‘intense emotional journey’ that reminds us of nature’s beauty, its complexity, and capacity for slow, but dramatic change.”

What I find interesting about this project is how it seems to use technology to subvert the traditional understanding of what technology itself is. Technology is often seen as cold, unfeeling, artificial, and fast-paced, so to use it for the purpose of reflecting something emotional, natural, and slow, makes viewers rethink how technology can be purposed.

Little preview of the Meandering River soundscape and how it was created. Like the creation of the simulated river movement also the sound is created in an unusual and unpredictable way. We teamed up with @theklongs to create an A.I. driven soundscape. Using Machine Learning a computer was tought to compose. How? They invited different real piano players to improvise to the river visualisation. This material was used to teach a machine to create its own interpretation of the piece. The machine takes what it has learnt via Machine Learning algorithms and improvises by “looking” not at the visuals but the raw data behind the visualization. The result is 6 different machine composed pieces generated by klingklangklong, the machine and the river. #meanderingriver #river #digitalart #code #generative #machinelearning #soundofrivers #berlinevents #soundart #soundinstallations #artificialintelligence #theklongs2018 #funkhausberlin #nature

A post shared by onformative (@onformative) on Jul 25, 2018 at 3:13am PDT

AI-generated soundscape for Meandering River

Link to a full description of the project and omformative’s website embedded above. Link to the Facebook event page here.

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