LookingOutwards-04 – Page 6 – [OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Sean Meng-Looking Outwards-04

Aders Lind generating sounds by appraoching to the LINES

link: https://cycling74.com/projects/lines-interactive-sound-art-exhibition/

LINES is an interactive sound art exhibition created by Swedish composer Anders Lind in 2016. Lines attached to the wall, on the floor and hanging from the ceiling in combination with sensors and electronics are forming three novel music instruments. No musical experiences are required to perform, while the well-experienced musician or composer finds new musical challenges and opportunities with the instruments. The ambition with LINES is to enable: new forms of musical interaction, an exploration of new artistic expressions and to provide unique and inspiring musical experiences. And more than and art installation, it creates people’s interaction by enabling them playing and composing together with LINES.

Xiaoyu Kang – Looking Outwards – 04

The Lady’s Glove is an experimental instrument that is developed by Laetitia Sonami first in 1991. The first glove is made from a kitchen glove and is glued with five hall effect transducers on its finger and a magnet on its right hand. As the fingers touch the magnet, the extruding voltages were converted into MIDI signals and which is then converted to synthesizers and samplers.

The later generation of the Lady’s glove incorporated much more elements such as pressure pad, resistive strips and ultrasonic receivers. It is made to create movement without spatial reference. Sonami had performed many times with the glove. The glove will capture the slightest movement as she was dancing and create sound. So in her performances, the Lady’s Glove helps to create an art show that her dance moves shapes the music and create a scene that is pleasing in both the musical and visual aspect.

Kimberlyn Cho- Looking Outwards- 04

Meier & Erdmann’s single, “Howler Monkey” uses a computational algorithm to visualize the driving sounds of the song in the music video. The algorithm was created by Victor Doval using both Processing and Blender (specifically the Sverchok add-on). The music video shows charcoal structures, archways, and spheres that constantly evolve to portray the “landscape”in sync with the music. The audio data from the spectrum of sound in the song determines the shape, material, and lighting of the objects in the video.

I really appreciate the experience provided by this computational music video. By accommodating a 24-hour timelapse in 290 seconds, the audience is able to watch the sunrise to the sunset, which evokes a “dreamy” experience for contemplation. I think its a great way to create a deeper relationship between the music and the music video in terms of the audience’s experience. By correlating the music to the visual art, musicians are also able to create unique videos for their music which I find more personal and thoughtful.

created by Victor Doval for the music video of “Howler Monkey” 2017

Sewon Park – LO-04

Image result for nocturne samson young — Samson Young getting ready for his performance of “Nocturne”

A piece of sound art that has inspired me is Samson Young’s “Nocturne”. I believe that the most important value of art is the message that it conveys to its audience. Nocturne is a groundbreaking project that incorporates both sound and visual effects to recreate the many aspects of the U.S bombings of the Middle East.

The visual component of the project includes a 6 hour film created through piecing together difference clips from news, radio, and youtube videos. The film is mute and the sounds are replaced by the array of household objects that Young brings in. He conducts research to find sounds that most accurately represents the original sound from the video and makes the coordination between the sounds and the film flawless through digital/manual coordination. His artistic sensibility is evident by the resemblance of the sounds produced by household objects to the one of the battlefields.

Young also draws his methods from the historical tactics of Ghost Army, who used their own tactics for deception during war. They recorded combat sounds and employed fake radio transmissions to confuse enemies. Young used similar algorithms to coordinate the sounds to the film.

A short film of “Nocturne” performed to give an idea of the coordination between visual and sound effects of the project.

Taisei Manheim – Looking Outward – 04

The project that I chose was Game of Skill 2.0 by Christine Sun Kim, which was presented at MoMA P.S.1. Christine has been deaf since birth and through this exhibit she attempts to show her subjective experiences with sound. Viewers were invited to hold an old fashioned radio with a staff and drag it along a velcro strip hung above their heads. As they walk with the staff being dragged along the strip, a sound is emitted at different levels and speeds depending on the direction and speed that the viewers walk in. By making the viewer exert a special effort in order to comprehend the sound, Christine shows the labor involved with listening, which is usually a passive activity. Christine has always been fascinated by how people take hearing for granted and through this exhibit affects how people interpret their own hearing of sounds. I admire how Christine was able to take the parts of sound and hearing that we usually don’t think about such as the act of hearing itself and how sight connects with hearing and made people face these questions that she faces on a daily basis.

Mihika Bansal – Looking Outwards – 04

The project that I think is incredibly interesting for this sound art, which is the Eternal Birth and Death of Infinite Parallel Universes, which is also the multiverse. This project focused on the development of a black hole. The project itself has a generative sound system.

The actual physics are a little bit above my head to truly understand the graphics. The way that the program works creates generative art that adapts that cycles throughout the life cycle of the art itself, which means that it is constantly changing and adapting to the art. The installation was staged in the first time for Borgo de Colonne 28, a church.

The exhibit itself consists of a vertical projection of 7.5 meters high and two large mirroring surfaces that generate an infinite reflection of the image towards the sky and the center of the earth. The project itself was created by Lee Smolin, an American theoretical physics.

Link to Project: https://www.creativeapplications.net/maxmsp/multiverse-the-eternal-birth-and-death-of-infinite-parallel-universes/

Chelsea Fan-Looking Outward-04

BIY (Believe It Yourself) is a studio based in Shanghai that created three different computing kits (BIY.SEE, BIY.MOVE, and BIY.HEAR) that let you build your own harmonious products. The BIY.MOVE kit uses fengshui and Chinese Geomancy to find a “good location” based off of GPS location of mountains and rivers nearby. The BIY.SEE helps you “see” everything good and bad around you through Italian superstitions and logic of the Smorfia. The BIY.HEAR uses a numerical language to find meaning in names and objects through training from Indian Numerology and Astrology.

I admire that BIY is completely unique and combines technology and superstition beliefs. I really like that the product kits comes in a defined technological form of wires, lights, buttons, etc. However, I find it very interesting that such a defined product is doing something (like finding a balanced place) so abstract and non-definite. I don’t know anything about the algorithms that generated such work, but I love that the kits are meant to help you help you “see luck” or “interpret your destiny.”

BIY.MOVE Kit including the “Harmonious Compass” that uses GPS Location to find a good location.

Ellan Suder Looking Outwards-04

Children interacting with the sculptures

The outdoor sound installation “Sonic Playground” (2018), created by Yuri Suzuki Design, features 6 colorful, trumpet-like sculptures that mod

The outdoor sound installation “Sonic Playground” (2018), created by Yuri Suzuki Design, features 6 colorful, trumpet-like sculptures that modify and transmit sound playfully. The software used to develop/optimize the installation was created by Luca Dellatorre in Grasshopper.

Though Grasshopper is a 3D geometrical software and not necessarily meant for sound, he was able to use Rhino 3D environment for acoustic applications because soundwaves can be simulated using ray tracing techniques. His software is meant to mimic the design techniques generally used in concert halls to “maximise the sound that reaches the audience and provide envelopment, strong lateral reflections, etc.” Using Rhino3D, Dellatorre evaluated different shapes for the mirrors and how the sound effect was changed — bells were especially effective in capturing and spreading sound.

I like the appearance of the sculptures. They’re very loopy and colorful, almost reminiscent of some Dr. Seuss illustrations. I think it could have been interesting if, instead of presenting the sculptures as 6 different objects, they designed them to overlap and possibly even intersect.

Looking Outwards – 04 – Joanne Chui

Milkdrop is a music visualizer that was first created in 2001 by geissworks. It starts out with multiple preset options to start from, in which the music would work to morph and distort certain variables in the presets. Users are allowed to also customize and create their own presets, even being able to write new code to be able to have more control over the visualization. I really like this aspect of the music visualizer because it allows for the program to be extremely user friendly and evolve further from the original program/creator’s intent. It seems that the algorithm relies on a lot of variables, such as color, speed, etc… in which the inputs are constantly being edited depending on the music. I wonder how the visualizations would be different if you were able to start without a preset, and base all the initial variable inputs on the music itself, rather than having the music edit the preset.

http://www.geisswerks.com/about_milkdrop.html

Ammar Hassonjee – Looking Outwards 04

A Real Time Climate Sound Controller

Photograph of Adrien Kaeser operating his climate sound controlling machine taken from Creative Applications Net.

A researcher from ECAL named Adrien Kaeser recently invented a custom sound controller he named “Weather Thingy” in January, 2018 that interprets real-time climate data to adjust the parameters on musical instruments such as a piano. His device is comprised of parts such as a weather station that collects climate data and a controller to the station that translates the weather related data into a data type that can be understood by electronic instruments called midi data.

The artist’s purpose was for anyone engaging the project to be able to listen and feel the real time effects of the weather through their sense of sound based on the compositions the instruments are playing. I admire this project’s goal to take two forms of data that are not commonly related to each other, yet find a way to program an input and conversion of one dataset of weather data to another in sound data. The project allows us to feel the weather using a sense we don’t typically use for that purpose in our sense of hearing.

Video showing the project operating and a visual of all its components.