Interaction as Pure Sound

Across-Offshoot–by Keiko Uneshi (o.blaat)–was recorded and broadcast by ORF radio in Vienna in April of 2005. In the words of the artist it is an ‘acoustic laptop’ recording with radio and laptop computer interaction as pure sound. One of these pure sounds became the feedback that Keiko Uenishi, aka o.blaat, used for her radio piece “across-offshoot.” The artist used a portable radio to create feedback in the laptop speaker. As we listen we hear airwave communication between two everyday devices – laptop and transistor radio – in the form of feedback off the FM carrier frequency. Listen to Across-Offshoot (.mov)
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Hosting Open Jams Every Sunday

SHARE Audio Jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.

SHARE Video Jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
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Audio Messages Left in Space

Theodore Watson’s Audio Space allows you to leave messages in specific locations within the room. Wearing a headset equipped with earphones and a microphone, visitors record messages that are then placed in the spot where it was recorded. Through the earphones, the messages are played along with those recorded by previous visitors. Each message sounds as if it is coming from the spot where it was recorded. The resulting effect is the sensation of walking through a space inhabited by ghosts, with each visitor leaving an aural mark for others to uncover. Video (wear headphones!) This work is part of the Parsons Thesis Show 2005.

Audiograffiti, by Andreea Chelaru, Ben Dove, Noel Perlas and Thomas Stovicek, investigates the “space with an audio memory” idea as well. The system allows you to leave tracks behind you through an “audio imprint”, just by going into an inflatable fabric tunnel, and activating one of the microphones that are ready to record and broadcast whatever we like, in a sort of melodic loop. More info: 1 and 2.
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Whispers in the Maze

Since May 6, visitors to the oldest maze in the world, Hampton Court Palace Maze can hear cymbals, a dog barking, a child laughing, the rustle of silk skirts, a tune from a music box, and the murmurs and sighs of three centuries of chatter at the palace. The sounds float around the maze so subtly that it is hard to distinguish them from real-life ones. Besides, quotes from staff discussing the facts and figures behind the attraction are interspersed in the sound effects.

The maze has been filled with sensors that trigger hidden speakers, which emit a variety of strange sounds and voices, waiting to be triggered by a footfall. The sounds are part of Greyworld’s last installation, Trace. The centre has been replanted with hornbeam and features touch-sensitive benches that create subtle sounds as visitors sit to relax. There are thousands of permutations of the sounds triggered from 20 speakers, so no visitors will ever hear exactly the same. [blogged by Regine on near near future]

Moulding Music in Your Hands

Malleable Music is a project by Sidney Fels at the Human Communication Technologies Laboratory at the Unversity of British Columbia in Canada. “The malleable surface touch interface combines a deformable input surface and video processing to provide a whole-hand interface that exhibits many attributes of conventional touch interfaces, such as multi-point and pressure sensitivity. This interface also offer passive haptic feedback, which can be effective with applications such as sculpting or massage. (…) This interface allows for people to control the computer using pinching, twisting, squeezing and other forms of whole hand manipulation. We want to use this device to create a new musical instrument.” [blogged by nicolas on pasta and vinegar]

Live Audiovisual Performance

Many sounds and images in our everyday lives slip past our notice simply because they are too small, or because we lack the proper receivers to pick them up. ResonanCITY is an ongoing project to gather these microscopic sounds from various cities, and to amplify and transform them. The goal is to build a new city of sound and visuals inside the old one, and to inspire curiosity and exploration of one’s own environment. Video artist Sara Kolster, searches for details and objects which she transformed in a microscopic way into macro-images. She uses different macro-lenses and a lightbox, capturing and manipulating these images live, without the use of any filters. The combination of film- and video techniques with analogue tools as found footage, positive film and photographs gives the performance a layered character.
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Hertzian Space Made Audible

ætherspace–by Nick Knouf–is a computational garment that uses transducers of electro-magnetic waves to make hertzian space audible, make the invisible sonic, giving the wearer a better understanding of the electronically-embodied world.

Transducers pick up the various components of hertzian space as you walk around. These components feed to a scaling algorithm that brings the range of hertzian space to that of normal hearing and can be perceived through the headphones. The project raises questions such as: What does a cell phone sound like when it is idle in a bag? What do dangerous EM waves sound like? Should the scaling algorithm take into account the perceived danger of certain types of EM radiation, e.g., make gamma waves a high-pitched screeching noise? If so, how would this change our interaction with space? Related: Electroprobes, the Amazing All-Band Radio, and Urban Chameleon. [blogged by Regine on near near future]

Listening to Place

In FLOAT–by Tuomo Tammenpää and Tamas Szakal–the ship is the play-head and the route is the track. Depth, direction, speed and surrounding islands build the score of the sound installation. The ship plays the track as it moves across the Baltic Sea. On the surface, there are shapes of islands and the coastline, drawn on the sea. The multitude of ship routes and passages that connect countries and cities together weave a vast invisible network of paths.

The sea, especially the deep unknown, holds its mysterious nature in the era of extreme traveling. There is a fascination for the dimensions of waterbodies and the secrets it possesses. The power of a storm, the long horizon and the incomprehensible raises respect among most of us.
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Mix the Acoustic Space

Mapamp–by Tam’s Szakl–uses existing structures and systems (architecture of a city, navigation and radio systems) to layer an artificial acoustic space over the original one. The participant walks the streets wearing a special vest that allows him/her to navigate through different sound data fields. These virtual spaces differ from the geographic city scape. Changing his / her position, the walker can pick up and mix the sounds, which come into connection with the architectural features of the public space: the noise of the surroundings, distant radio stations and abstract sound samples intermingle in the space, depending upon the position, direction and velocity of the visitors. Related: Steve Symons’ Aura, Sonic City, Sonic Interface by Akitsugu Maebayashi. [blogged by Regine on near near future]

Turbulence Spotlight

Voice Mosaic–Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel–is a web-art application that converges speech and image, building a visual mosaic on the web with the chosen colors and recorded voices of people who interact with it from any place around the globe. The voice interface, developed with open-standards in speech synthesis and voice recognition technologies, works through phone calls from any telephone.

Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel is Director of Technology at NMD Internet & Multimedia, Ltd. – developers of several successful websites in Brazil, like HBO’s, Sony’s, and Warner Bros’ television channels and Monica’s Gang – winner of 9 Internet Best Awards in Brazil since 1998. She is Professor of ‘New Technologies’ and ‘Marketing’ at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi; International technical advisor in US for AllHealthNet.com; and a frequent speaker at Internet conferences in Brazil and the US. Engineer, postgraduate in Marketing and Graphics Design, she is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Multimedia at ECA/USP, focusing on man/machine interfaces.

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