Sydney Salamy: Looking Outwards-07

Herald Harbinger is a piece created by Jer Thorp in 2018. The piece is a number of columns made up of bars of screens. These screens visualize both the human activity that occurs outside the plaza (ie: movements of people and of vehicles) and the real-time activity of the Bow Glacier located in the Canadian Rockies, and the glacier activity is made audible outside the plaza as well. These visualized data feeds are supposed to contrast with and show the relationship between each other (human activity vs. natural activity).

 

  • I admire how much effort is put into the project to get it to work. Not only did they have to go all the way to an iceberg to get the sounds, but instead of just getting a recording and leaving, they decided to set up their equipment so that the sound is collected in real time. I also like the idea of humans vs. nature. The way Thorp used moving lights to portray this relationship was interesting, and resulted in a pretty piece. I like their decision to play the sounds of the glacier outside the building. Since it’s an urban area, there isn’t much of a chance for interaction with nature, especially nature of this type, making the choice much more impactful and interesting.

 

  • I don’t know much about the algorithms that generated the work, but I assume it’s relatively complicated. The algorithms would need to be able to convert the information they are receiving from the two very separate areas into lights to be portrayed on the screens. I’m not sure if specific sounds got specific positions and/or colors on the screens, or whether it was all random, but this would have to have been written in the algorithms as well. This conversion would also have to be done in real time. 

 

  • Thorp’s work revolves around data, and he is one of the world’s most well-known data artists. Herald Harbinger uses data collected from the equipment near the glacier and the urban area outside the plaza the piece is in to create the piece itself. The data is what is shown interacting on the screens.
Video demonstrating the art piece Herald Harbinger. It shows the piece in action, lights changing in correspondence to the changes in the sound that are being played during the video. It also shows outside the building where the sounds of the glacier is being played and where the sounds of human life are being taken from.
Equipment used to gather the sound data from the Bow Glacier in the Canadian Rockies. Pictured is a number of crates with wires and other equipment inside, along with a stand holding up pannels.

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