Category: LookingOutwards-04

Fallon Creech-LookingOutwards-04

Video demonstrates how a user would interact with the machine

“Weather Thingy,” a sound project designed by designer Adrien Kaeser, uses climate-related events to modify and control sounds, which ultimately produces a string of various and unpredictable effects that update according to weather data. This machine utilizes two primary parts; a weather station consists of various climate sensors, and a custom-built controller assigns parameters to sound effects. The weather data interpreted by this machine can also be visualized on a screen and even allows the musician to control the amplification of the sound.

I respect the control that Kaeser gives to musicians using this machine; while the machine does force the user to interpret the climatic impact on the composition of their music, it gives them the control to both override and reuse these effects throughout. It insures the artist still has creative freedom, but encourages them to acknowledge factors beyond their own control.

Image depicts the various instruments through which sound is interpreted.

Aaron Lee – Looking Outwards – 04

Mostly active during late 90s and around 2000s, Brian Eno is a pioneer of ambient music with many inspiring pieces those are familiar to only our ears. Windows 95 starup sound is one of them. This instantly recognizable pieces of music was to open up the new era of internet. Because the artist was asked to capture the symbolic image of Windows into roughly 6 seconds or even less, Brain Eno soon became obsessed by this task, making 84 different versions. Ironically Eno uses Mac and says that he never used a PC in this life. I am quite unsure whether Eno introduced certain algorithms to generate his work (probably not?). But this piece was so iconic to me that I wanted to discuss about it.

Jacky Tian’s LookingOutwards-04

LAETITIA SONAMI — Magnetic Memories

Laetitia Sonami is a sound and installation artist and performer. She explores ideas of presence and participation in relation to science through her sound performances, live-film collaborations and sound installations.

Born in France and later came to United States to study electronic music, Laetitia Sonami designed various of new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and industrial materials to express and link the audiences to her through sound, place and objects.

As one of her most famous art pieces, Magnetic Memories was performed with a electrical charged magnetic ring and three strings going across the ring in the middle. During the performance, she vibrates and stops the three strings to create unique electronic sounds.

Julia Nishizaki – Looking Outwards – 04

The project I chose to look at is called Soft Sound, created by EJTECH (Esteban de la Torre and Judit Eszter Kárpáti). Soft Sound combines sound with fabric in order to play with textiles as an audio-emitting surface, and to create multi-sensory interactions. For example, not only can the fabric project sound, but the vibrations caused by the sound interact with the textile, causing it to throb and move. Soft Sound creates “soft” speakers by applying laser or vinyl cut copper and silver coils onto fabric, and running alternating current through the coils.

An example of EJTECH’s Soft Sound technology in use – the coils project sound, vibrating the fabric

I found this project interesting and inspiring, as not only does this project turn sound into a more tangible artefact, since you can feel the sound’s vibrations through the fabric, but it’s also done in a very open-ended manner, allowing for the technology to be applied to a variety of different uses, from e-textiles for wearable technology, to more traditional applications at home and everyday.

Looking Outwards – 04

A rather unconventional way of generating sound digitally I have seen many times throughout the past through years is actually the composition of music through the use of a level creation engine in the game Super Mario Maker released in 2015. After many programmers discovered how certain objects functioned, they learned to manipulate them to create music. A specific item that can be placed in a level called a note block makes a different sound when each different object type in the game makes contact with it, and as the screen follows the main character, the blocks are generated, making music. Based on where vertically the block is placed, the pitch will change, and the tone is based on what is placed above it. This has been used to create compositions up to a minute long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j20wi8-Wlq4

Shannon Ha – Looking Outwards – 04

test pattern [N 12] at store studios.

Ikeda works with music in a variety of “raw” states, such as sine tones and noise, and explores a range of frequencies that are often close to the limit of what humans can hear. I appreciate how he is able to push the sensorial boundaries of humans through his art by using sound patterns to heighten the audiences’s awareness of what they can and cannot hear.  

The sounds that he produces may come across as random, but he actually combines a variety of discrete tones and noises, in addition to beat patterns to create a drumming effect. He matches the frequency of the sound to the visual installation of strobe lights on the floor of Store Studios to create an overwhelming environment.

Claire Yoon-LookingOutwards -04

Meandering River-audiovisual art installation

Meandering Rivers is an multi channel video installation that premiered at Funkhaus, Berlin on 7/28 to 7/30. It is suspended on multiple screens inside the Sound Chamber’s concrete cavern. There is music, composed by an A.I. playing that shifts in tone when the river and surface patterns shift while this video is playing which, further adds on movement through sonic sound and visuals. A nice harmony is created . between the sound and imagery that creates an “intense emotional journey” through looking at this installation.

This installation uses the vibrancy and dynamic textures on this painting to represent natural forces that have actually shaped these landscapes over time. Although the sound is not verbally communicating anything there is depth and symbolism to the sound that helps conveys the message better as well.

vibrant painterly soundscapes creating rhythmic movement of rivers

Charmaine Qiu-LookingOutwards 04

The Prelude in ACGT is a project created by Pierry Jaquillard where he used his own DNA to generate music by utilizing the chromosomes 1 to 22 and XY. Believing that DNA is the core structure of nature, Pierry wanted to experiment with his own personal code.

The project was created through JavaScript, and he generated midi signals that was passed into Ableton Live, a music sequencer, to play the sounds. The project was displayed on 4 ipads and a phone, where the phone is used to change tempo and arrangement. I found this project really interesting since it celebrated the nature of human beings and creating art through biology could become a direction of art in the future. 

A video explaining the Prelude in ACGT project

Austin Garcia – Looking Outwards – 04 – Section C

The Dolby Gallery by Leviathan

The Dolby Gallery installation by Leviathan utilizes sound to alter visual environments and art forms. The colors displays in this gallery are generated from famous visual artworks, reduced to primal colors and fragmented in order to create a flowing, abstract visual language. This amalgam of visual data is then transformed by the sounds played through nearby speakers. As these visual patterns flow and shift  to the music, you are enveloped in the soundscape – your audio and visual sensors stimulated by your surroundings. This allows for a beautiful conversation between visual art and sound, both of which are often abstracted from one another.

The Dolby Gallery

William Su – LookingOutwards – 04

Musical Fire Table: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2awbKQ2DLRE

Description from the video: The pressure variations due to the sound waves affect the flow rate of flammable gas from the holes in the Pyro Board and therefore affect the height and colour of flames. This is interesting for visualizing standing wave patterns and simply awesome to watch when put to music.

While the people that made this didn’t really intend or utilize this as “art”, It is a performance that is really interesting to look at despite how simple it is to get the fire table to work. While i’m not sure if there is any computational stuff behind it (most of it involves simply physics and running standing waves through the gas pipes), I can see this being scaled up, like in a stadium or stage performance with the pyrotechnic stuff that is commonly found there.