I have always had a deep appreciation for the products of the intersection between art and biology. However, I’d only ever seen visual examples of this genre of work, so I was really excited and fascinated by Pierry Jacquillard’s Prélude in ACGT, a piece that takes the A-C-G-T (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine) order of Jacquillard’s own DNA and uses a Javascript-based program to convert it into the musical notes A, C, G, and T to a musical score. I really admired the concept of combining biology and music to create an organically generated musical piece that also holds deep meaning for an individual in regards to his own identity.
Prelude in ACGT, Chr. 1 to 22 and XY ECAL/Pierry Jaquillard
“This Prelude is important for me, as the technological advances are taking any data (including music) and turn them into DNA in order to save them for almost eternity as they promise. But for me, the most important is more the interpretation of a code rather than the materialism of the code itself. I think that maybe we are just generating data that will last centuries but the key to retrieve them won’t. They could be a kind of post-digital hieroglyphs.”
Pierry Jacquillard
The algorithm that generated the work is written in JavaScript, using a midi library that generates signals to be converted into electronic sounds. I suppose that the DNA analysis is done outside of the code, but that the program takes the DNA analysis information and converts the A, C, G, and T to corresponding sound files. I believe that conceptually, this work is very simple, but that the concept in itself is very creative.
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.
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.
In 2014, Mexico City-based artist Julian Bonequi uses digital drawing technology to create surreal – yet lifelike – animal portraits. I admire the project because it is very detail-driven. The detail involved in each of Bonequi’s 3D compositions captivates the eye, making even the most mundane joint on the leg of an insect into a point of intense interest. The inspiration of Bonequi comes from nature, which he portraits animals with vibrant colors and scientific structures.
The source does not include the exact software or technique the artist uses. However, his possible 3D drawing tools may be Blender, ZBrush, Lightwave, etc. He may creates the shining pink and purple bubbles, bright blue doughnuts and red-orange tubes by these tools.
Creator’s artistic sensibility manifests by capturing normal animals and transforming them into hyper-detailed psychotropic beings from another reality. His works include stag, grasshopper, tiger, elephant, scorpion, etc.
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.
//Siwei Xie
//Section B
//sxie1@andrew.cmu.edu
//Project-04
var StepSize1 = 30;
var StepSize2 = 50;
function setup() {
createCanvas(400, 300);
background("black");
}
function draw() {
//red curves on upper left
var x1 = 0;
var y1 = 0;
var x2 = 300;
var y2 = 5;
for (var i = 0; i < 85; i += 1) {
stroke(220, 104, 100);
line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
x2 -= 30;
y1 += 30;
}
//orange curves on lower left
var x1 = 0;
var y1 = 0;
var x2 = 60;
var y2 = 400;
for (var i = 0; i < 85; i += 1) {
stroke("orange");
line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
x2 += 30;
y1 += 30;
}
//yellow curves on lower left
var x1 = 0;
var y1 = 0;
var x2 = 200;
var y2 = 300;
for (var i = 0; i < 85; i += 1) {
stroke("yellow");
line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
x2 += 30;
y1 += 30;
}
//green curves on lower right
var x1 = 400;
var y1 = 0;
var x2 = 200;
var y2 = 300;
for (var i = 0; i < 85; i += 1) {
stroke("green");
line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
x2 -= 30;
y1 += 30;
}
//blue curves on lower right
var x1 = 400;
var y1 = 0;
var x2 = 300;
var y2 = 400;
for (var i = 0; i < 85; i += 1) {
stroke("blue");
line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
x2 -= 30;
y1 += 30;
}
//purple curves on upper right
var x1 = 400;
var y1 = 0;
var x2 = 100;
var y2 = 5;
for (var i = 0; i < 85; i += 1) {
stroke("purple");
line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
x2 += 30;
y1 += 30;
}
}
I created a color scheme with a hollow diamond in the middle.
It was hard to figure out how to form the curvy lines at the beginning, but after I got the first set of lines done, the following constructions were easier.
The project I chose to write about is Weather Thingy by Adrien Kaeser. It was made in 2018 with help from Cyril Diagne, Gaël Hugo, Christophe Guignard, Laura Perrenoud, Tibor Udvari, Pietro Alberti, and Marc Dubois. The project is a sound controller that uses the weather to make music. The device converts things like rain, wind, and sunlight into midi data which instruments can then interpret. It gets this data with its rain gauge, brightness sensor, and wind anemometer and vane. The other part of the piece is a controller that’s responsible for the transforming of the weather data.
I really like the idea of incorporating natural events into manmade activities. The device allows for there to be input from the musician but also allows for a significant amount of randomness from the weather. I like the idea of mixing natural and manmade things because they are essentially opposite things, so having them brought together to create something pretty is a nice idea to me. The random aspect to some of the music is interesting as well. Leaving some stuff up to chance is exciting because no one can really guess what the end product will sound like.
I don’t know much about the algorithms that generated the work. However, I assume they are moderately complicated. Kaeser would have had to assign certain notes and other musical aspects to certain wind speeds, direction, and brightness.
The artist seems to have a minimalist aesthetic. I assume this because the final form is very simple yet effective. The video demonstrating is also minimalist looking (although I don’t know how much creative power he had over that). If the music he creates is counted as part of the final product, then it also shows his artistic sensibilities. He is able to play his own notes on the keyboard that he came up with, with the weather music added to it. Also, the different weather events cause different kinds of sounds, so he obviously imagined those events sounding a certain way and then incorporated that into the product.
By: Xambo, A., Drozda, B., Weisling, A., Magerko, B., Huet, M., Gasque, T., and Freeman, J
TuneTable demo in Museum of Design Atlanta
TuneTable is a project that provides an interactive tabletop application to teach basic computer programming concepts. Users can compose short musical snippets with visual displays by arranging the blocks in different locations to build chains of blocks of code. I admire the fun aspect of creating a learning activity for kids and also how easy it is to make music and visuals without having to think very hard. For the algorithms, I think the blocks placed on the table have special outputs based on where it is placed and also the rotation of it. The creator’s artistic sensibilities comes into play in the musical and visual algorithms created for the blocks that get put down onto the table.
For this project I wanted to experiment with basic dynamic principles that varied based on mouse position including color, position, size, and distance.
let shape;
function setup() {
createCanvas(640, 480);
//shape randomly assumes Y position each time page is refreshed
shape = random(255);
}
function draw() {
background(shape, mouseX, 0);
//size of ellipse is dependent on location of mouseX
var m = max(min(mouseX, 640), 0);
var size = m * 350.0 / 400.0;
ellipse(size, shape, 50, mouseX);
}
My project was pretty tricky to make. Trying to get the ellipses to expand and stop at different points took a while, and I had to settle for them all moving at once, and there was a lot of trial and error. My end result is a Day to Night transition.
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