Unnamed Sound Sculpture

“Unnamed Sound Sculpture” by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer may be a piece that many of you have passed by as you were working on assignment four since it is one of the first few projects advertised on he processing home page. However, I would still like to give credit where it is due because this project was absolutely amazing to me. The way the sculpture was rendered seemed as if it was in an actual place and the sculpture itself seemed to take up more room than it’s location or even the computer screen would allow. The dance positions the sculpture posed in was striking because of the fragments of pixels seemingly falling of the subject. A few critiques I do have about the piece was that the video dramatized the piece so much so that I was not able to get away from the ‘computer’ feeling of the piece since the footage was so obviously edited. This may or may not be a good thing, however from reading the accompanying article, it looked to me as if they were focusing on the simplicity of the motion. therefore, it seemed illogical that their video featured flashing lights, revolving cameras, and thundering sounds.

This composition by Miquel Parera Jaques interested me because it has a delicate nature about it. The lines are small and thin enough that the piece looks as though it was drawn with a pencil. Unlike the last piece, simplicity was really the founding principal for this piece and has been carried out very successfully. The piece also has a lot of depth to it since I find myself getting lost in the lines that all seem to point to the same line/tip.  The form created by the lines seems architectural and thus appears to pop off the page.

 

This “Kiss Controller” by Hye Yeon Nam was hilarious! The concept was so ridiculous but at the same very charming; by attaching a wire to her tongue, Nam was able to play a virtual bowling bowl game by kissing. The motions and speed of her tongue affect controls in the game and thus she is able to knock down pins. This project strongly reminded me of (some) Japanese restrooms in which there are games that you can play while peeing (the strength and duration and aim of it are the controllers). I doubt that the player of this kissing game can even see the screen very well with your partner right in front of you. These sort of projects are so ridiculous that one has to laugh; they are nothing short of charming.

 

 

Discovery 1: “unnamed soundsculpture”

Artwork

Process Video

“unnamed soundsculpture” is a piece by Daniel Franke and Cedric Kiefer. The video was produced by onformative, a studio for generative design, which was co-founded by Kiefer, and Chopchop, a three person studio of which Franke is a member.

“unnamed soundsculpture” not only interested me, but fascinated and moved me. My first reaction was just to the aesthetics.—I find the piece itself to be truly beautiful. I love the movement and how the movement’s sound interplays with the music. I love the cinematography and the look of the particles in motion. It made me feel. Aside from my immediate reaction, I think this piece is so interesting because it uses computation and technology so artistically. The technology augments the dancer’s performance, and the generative movement-sound code makes the dance that much more expressive. The technique of capturing motion using a kinect, then using it for a piece—as raw material, also impresses me and makes me think about the possible uses for that technique.

Discovery 2: Firewall

Firewall is an interactive media installation created by Aaron Sherwood and Mike Allison, a master’s student at ITP at NYU. Aaron Sherwood is a musician and the Artist in Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York. They created the piece for the performance piece Mizaru.

The interface for the installation (which, to me, is more an instrument than an installation) is a large piece of spandex which people can brush their hands over or push into to affect the speed and volume of the music being played. Sherwood and Allison created the piece using Processing, Max/MSP, Arduino, and a Kinect. Their documentation doesn’t specify how exactly they used Processing, but my best guess is that they used it for the visuals—changing the projected lines on the spandex in response to data from the Kinect depth camera.

I find firewall interesting because of the depth of interaction it creates; even a brief interaction with the firewall is expressive for a user/viewer. I also enjoy the combination of touch (pressure on the fabric), sound, and light in the piece; I think each mode fits in well with the whole. Another aspect of this piece that interests me is how it plays with the definition music performance. I’ve played piano for most of my life, and performed in recitals. The way I always approached performance was to memorize my recital piece, then, once I could reliably play the right notes, to add some of myself to the piece, changing the way I played it subtly. What’s interesting about firewall is that it allows people to get to the point where they express themselves through the performance of a piece of music so quickly.

 Discovery 3: Kinograph

Kinograph is a project by Matthew Epler, a freelance technologist and artist. Kinograph is an open source project for digitization of old film strips, extracting both the picture and sound to digital media at high resolution. Kinograph uses Processing to stabilize the captured images—a pretty utilitarian use of the language.

Epler’s project interests me because while it is generative art, the code part of the art doesn’t take center stage. Kinograph does fall on the edge of generative art, to me, though. I think the concept, extending and refreshing cultural memory, is strong and artful and meaningful. However, the project is tricky because the film it’s digitizing isn’t really Epler’s art; it’s the project itself. To me, the way that this project generates art is by generating new experiences of people with old films. Aside from being on the edge of generative art/having a different take on it, I liked Kinograph because it seemed so well-engineered, using multiple open source libraries and manufacturing techniques economically to achieve Epler’s desired effect.

http://openprocessing.org/sketch/2920

Interactive Roots by Esteban Hufstedler generates patterns of root structures emanating from a central point, creating beautiful, two dimensional, radial structures in Processing. This work is highly engaging, and I enjoyed the many levels of interaction it provides. From color, speed, size and transparency, the work explores all permutations of the root pattern. This allows each use of Interactive Roots to be unique in experience, process, and result. The applicable changes to the form are simple, almost expected, and that lends the work a sense of simplicity that heightens the importance of each change and each form. The simplicity gives the work its whimsical feeling and each change to the setting gives whimsical form. This simplicity surprised me in visual effectiveness.

 

http://similardiversity.net/project/

Similar Diversity by Phillipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller visualizes the word traffic of five of the world’s sacred texts. The project uses Processing to connect word frequency and context among the books, showing the common ways humans describe their spirituality. The work is a comment on the absurdity of religious conflicts. I think the forms used in this visualization could take into account the various symbols of the religions. The way the words are connected gets the information across, but lends no content to the work. Color choice too, is important. I feel that color was used organizationally here, but not for content. Choosing colors that resonate with the beliefs of the faith, for example red for Christianity to symbolize the blood of Christ, could help to push the idea. Having these colors bleed into the connection lines and mingle with the colors of the other faiths would reinforce the point.

http://tomgerhardt.com/mudtub/

Tom Gerhardt’s Mud Tub uses Processing to allow the user control a computer with a vat of mud. The work reminds me of my childhood; Computers were these sacred clean objects and it was punishable by death if you even brought a glass of water near one. This work uses a childish material, mud, to fly in the face of that limitation. Mud is opposite of what society sees as an acceptable computer; it is dirty, shapeless, free, and associated with children. The mud gives the user a more organic experience, taking the pain out of the general sit and stare computer interface. I also enjoy the variety of games you can play with the mud, from “Drop the ball in the hole” to Tetris. The fun of this work is the combination of material and game choice, all childhood favorites of mine, creating an unexpected, simple experience that reconnects a user to his childhood.

The Generative Gatsby is a design project in generative typography by Vladimir Kuchinov, it uses nine songs from swing-era musicians such as Ella Fitzgerald, Jelly Roll Morton, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and more to influence the typographic layout of Fitzgerald’s text. “The algorithm I used transposes The Great Gatsby‘s content according to the attributes of the notes,” Kuchinov says.

This work is a nice piece where an analog medium is enhanced with digital tools. Typography meets processing. music is translated into fonts and letters.

“I have been carefully selected six typefaces for every single instrument. I did a very solid contextual research to fit the concept. For example, drums and percussions are represented by Remington Typewriter font, because this brand was extremely popular …” (Kuchinov in Huffpost, 8th September 2013)