Fernando Orellana - Elevator Music

Elevator's Music by Fernando Orellana from jackadam on Vimeo.

The site-specific installation “Elevator’s Music”, visits the topic of synthetic creatures becoming sentient. What if centuries from now, we had the technology to make any machine self-aware? In this distant future, if an elevator could be self-aware, what would it be like? What might an elevator think about, what might it dream about, what might it sing about.

Hidden within the translucent ceiling panels of an elevator are installed four servo-driven mechanisms. Controlled by microprocessors and networked together, each robot includes a small speaker for sound output, a microphone and sonic sensorial input, and is designed with three axes of rotational freedom. Through this design, the mechanisms act as the vocal cords, the eardrums, and the appendages of the elevator. Additionally, each robot can individually “emerge” from within the elevator’s interior by opening a sliding door in the ceiling.

At times some robots will hide within the safety of the elevators ceiling, perhaps responding to passengers that are too loud or too active. During moments of relative inactivity, the robots might all come out of their shells, displaying emergent behavioral patterns driven by the echoes, whispers, murmurs, and motions of the elevator’s passengers.

This emergent behavior is also reflected in the sounds the robots produce, which are generated in “real-time” by the microprocessors. In this way, the resulting real-time soundscape can be said to be elevator music. More poignantly, one could say it was the Elevator’s Music.

The images of “Elevator’s Music” on this site document the installation of it in 2007 at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Spring, NY.

Project 004: VÅLLÖ Installation

   Audio excerpt from VÅLLÖ Installation by ggiunta

  
More info and thoughts on my piece coming soon.

Project 003: Rhythm with light

   Osanyow - Test02 by ggiunta

This is a test improv using solar panel, strobe lights and delay pedal.

Tetsuya Umeda & Kanta Horio

 

"Tetsuya Umeda: Science of Superstition"

A bucket and a mop and a ramshackle assortment of fans and lights — all sprawled across the floor and ceiling of Ota Fine Arts in east Tokyo's Kachidoki area (www.ota.finearts.com) — lie dormant. 

Flick several switches, though, and a chaotic performance ensues, pulleys plunging objects into water-filled trash cans, spinning rotors connecting dangling wires to complete electrical circuits that set off lights and explosions of sound.

Tetsuya Umeda's installations are as much about those sounds as they are about the arrangement of the everyday items he uses. Umeda's main work is the objects' performance, which he helps orchestrate but is never in control of. At Ota, he has assembled four electrical circuits that are connected and trigger one another with unpredictable results: Watch for a while and there is no regular pattern, rather a random escalation of noise, flashes and motion followed by silences.

The artist often performs in rundown buildings with installations that reflect the disorder around them. Ota Fine Arts is one of the smaller spaces that Umeda has used, as was Ota's room at the Art@Agnes art fair in Tokyo this past January. In one of the best presentations in the hotel fair, a pile of feathers in a bedroom, looking as if it had been pulled out of a comforter, would burst into the air when a fan was turned on by an electrical circuit being completed when wires dipped into the tub in the bathroom.

You could attempt a meaningful statement about the unpredictability of these constructions representing the random nature of our existence in the world, but that would be as futile as assigning a particular meaning to life. Probably it's best to just sit back and enjoy the show.

These two Japanese artist occasionally combine Installations with performance/intervention in some of their collaborations together.  It's quite interesting and gives me a lot of ideas of how I can develop my sound sculpture/installations.

L'Ikea è un labirinto, per far spendere più soldi

 

«Arma psicologica per confondere i favorire gli acquisti». L'azienda: «Li mettiamo solo a loro agio» 

MILANO - Non è stato costruito da re Minosse per rinchiudere il Minotauro, ma l'interno dell'Ikea è un vero e proprio labirinto. Lo afferma una ricerca scientifica condotta dal professor Allan Penn, direttore del Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment dell'UCL (University College London). In pratica, dice il professore, la struttura dell'Ikea è un'arma psicologica tesa a confondere e disorientare i clienti in modo da farli spendere sempre di più. «Il successo dell'Ikea si basa – dice Allan Penn- su una specie di imbarazzo dei clienti che perdono l'orientamento. Per raggiungere l'uscita bisogna girovagare in una serie infinita di svolte e giravolte. In questo infinito viaggio si mettono perciò nel carrello molte più cose di quelle preventivate».

SEDE DI LONDRA - Il professore, per la sua ricerca, si è basato sulla struttura dell'Ikea di Londra. «Ma i magazzini della società svedese sono più o meno uguali in tutto il mondo. Ovunque c'è un sentiero, segnato da strisce sul pavimento, lungo il quale il catalogo dei prodotti dell'azienda assume una forma fisica perché tutti gli oggetti sono esposti. Il concetto, insomma, è che restando nel labirinto si resta a contatto con mobili, seggiolini, lampade, padelle. Tutti prodotti a poco prezzo. Che vengono comprati». 

SMENTITA - Ovviamente, un portavoce dell'Ikea ha smentito le tesi del professore londinese affermando che la struttura dell'Ikea è stata studiata solo per mettere a proprio agio i clienti, mostrando loro tutti i prodotti in vendita. 

ORIGINI - L'Ikea ha 283 negozi in 26 differenti nazioni che hanno generato, nel 2010, 2,7 miliardi di euro di profitti. E' stata fondata nel 1943 dallo svedese Ingvar Kamprad, il quale già da piccolo aveva il la fissa degli affari: vendeva fiammiferi ai suoi vicini di casa. Poi si accorse che poteva pagarli meno acquistandoli da un grossista di Stoccolma. Dopo i fiammiferi si diede alla vendita di pesce, decorazioni per alberi di Natale, matite, sementi, penne a sfera e altri prodotti. A 17 anni, grazie ai soldi ricevuti da suo padre per i suoi eccellenti risultati scolastici, fondò il "labirinto", come lo chiama il professor Penn. Kamprad, che ha 84 anni, fino a poco tempo fa guidava un'auto vecchia di 15 anni, volava in classe economica e raccomandava ai suoi dipendenti di scrivere sempre su tutti e due i lati di un foglio per risparmiare la carta.

 Similar article in English below 

Why shoppers find it so hard to escape from Ikea: Flatpack furniture stores are 'designed just like a maze

If you've ever found yourself hopelessly lost in an Ikea store, you were probably not alone.

The home furnishing chain’s mazy layouts are a psychological weapon to part shoppers from their cash, an expert in store design claims.

The theory is that while following a zig-zag trail between displays of minimalist Swedish furniture, a disorientated Ikea customer feels ­compelled to pick up a few extra impulse purchases.

A-mazing: A route a customer took through a store. Professor Alan Penn said they are designed to stop customers leaving...

My hard drive is experiencing some strange noises

The sound of a defective hard disk is picked up by a contact microphone. The acoustic wave is instantly processed by a software that repeats and amplifies sounds creating a resounding echo. 

Gregory Chatonsky is an artist born in Paris. He currently resides in Montreal and Paris.

He holds a philosophy master’s from the Sorbonne and a multimedia advanced degree from the Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts in Paris. He has worked on numerous solo and group projects in France, Canada, the United States, Italy, Australia, Germany, Finland and Spain. His works have been acquired by public collectors such as the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie.

I was told that my sound sculpture presented at the Containment project sounds like a defective hard disk. 

Henrik Menné

Whether they are dynamic or static; sculptures by Henrik Menné are basically about process, balance and about organizing matter through both rigid systems and chance.

The major part of Mennés production consists of large-scale machines or arrangements temporarily put at work when exhibited - all sculptures are ‘in the making’ so to say. Their process is always silent, controlled and structured by repetitive movements as the machines transform a single material - plastic, wax, metal or stone - into peculiar objects. These soft-formed elements are seldom regarded as autonomous art works and destroyed or recycled when no longer on show.
Although closed and often self-referring, the system in which the process takes place both changes the environment and is sensible to changes in the environment. The instability of the physical context is therefore what causes important marginal variations in the shapes of the particular outcome.

The static sculptures by Menné contain the same immense effort and obsessive trait when it comes to putting forces such as gravity and well-known qualities ascribed to conventional materials into play. Another more conceptual approach is to be found in the few replicas of everyday objects, which are disturbed to the point where they loose the original function.

The intriguing low tech and analogue character of all works by Henrik Menné make visible the principle on which the individual system of the particular sculpture is organised. Despite this rational transparency works by Menné almost always appear as logically impossible and tremendously beautiful.

I'm really impressed by these sculpture. I like the simplicity and fragility of some of these structures. I'm particularly interested in the piece called 'Container' (2005 polystyrene balls, fan diameter 210 cm).

Michael Landy's Art Bin

Without Records

 

 "without records" Otomo Yoshihide＋Yasutomo Aoyama  

In this installation, there are about over a hundred portable record players without records. In the space, turntables scattered everywhere, high and low, right and left, produce noises by the rotating friction, resonating in multilayer. Quiet, low-fi sounds form groups and change the entire image of sounds. This works provide people with an opportunity to reconsider the meaning, possibilities, and historical significance of sound art composed of records and turntables, which are being consigned to oblivion in the digital age. 

Otomo Yoshihide is an artist I really appreciate. He has a huge influence on my work and ideas. Today I was talking to a fellow classmate about an idea I have for a project using CD/DVD players (although different to Otomo's colab I see a connection).  I realized that I've had this idea stored away in a hidden (forgotten) compartment of my brain. I should write everything down and then develop them at a later stage (or discard them).

Hum

Mounted on each ceiling fan is one speaker and audio equipment. Sound is activated with a tilt switch (movement activated switch) when a fan starts spinning. The sound consists of a simple, hummed melody. Each 2 minute recording is endlessly looped while the fan spins six fans spinning six melodies to create a chorus. The spinning speakers give the audio a tremolo effect (like the spinning speakers of the Hammond organ) which varies based on the fans speed. Each fan is moving in the same pattern (controlled by a computer) but the staggered start time of each fan results in an ever-changing pattern.

Exhibition History:
2003 York Quay Gallery (Toronto); 2005 Toronto Convention Centre (in conjunction with Toronto International Art Fair)

www.marlahlady.com

MUAC installation

Instalación de Cildo Meireless from Ismael on Vimeo.

Cildo Meireles is one of Brazil’s most respected and international artists. He is known as a conceptual installation artist. He is noted especially for his installations, many of which express resistance to political oppression in Brazil. These works, often large and dense, encourage the viewer’s interaction. This is a piece he showed at the MUAC museum in Mexico City.

Still no guides

Emmanuel Lagarrigue is a young French artist who works with sound as a material rather than as a medium. He uses it in sculptures and installations. This video features the piece Still no guides from 2008, an atmospheric combination of neon lights and buffer sound.

Kinetic Light Installation

Beacon at Lightwave 2009 from Cinimod Studio & Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Lately I have been interested in exploring light (with sound). Yes I'm aware there is no sound in this particular piece.

Floating Forecaster

Floating Forecaster from Richard Harvey on Vimeo.

A floating display that reinterprets weather information via hovering patterns and flowing movements. The user is invited to create patterns and sequences using either an iPhone interface or a sequencing program

Made with: 30 airbed pumps, a lightuino, max msp, c74 app

Adaptive Bloom

Justin Goodyer: Adaptive Bloom - Bartlett School of Architecture from Ruairi Glynn on Vimeo.

Justin’s work is a prototype responsive screen proposed as a speculative stage set. Blooming mechanical flowers are used as pixels in a grid formation responding to movement. It draws on the balletic tradition of a choreographic poem combining narrative, choreography and score.

The piece is conceived as the backdrop to a holistic improvised performance featuring an aleatoric score, with the dreamlike behaviour of the screen responding to the interplay of a male/female dance pair. It is framed from a narrative taken from the song “Busby Berkeley dreams”... http://www.constructingrealities.com/?p=5

Timecodematter Installation

In the interactive installation Timecodematter the visitor enters an arena that is bordered with vibrating sheets of massive steel. The steel objects are pulsating with low frequencies and they react to the approach of persons. The acoustic energy in this installation is both penetrating and intangible: the resonant properties of twelve different steel sheets respond to the low frequencies and produce a conjuring effect.
 

Christoph De Boeck is part of the production structure 'deepblue' - www.deepblue.be

Kinetic lights

"Kinetic lights" consists of a flexible arrangement of remote controllable cable winches with attached LED light modules. Each light module can be adjusted individually in height and luminance by the control software. By synchronizing position and light animation, complex shapes and light patterns can be generated within the array. Any number of winches can be arranged in any spacial configuration. Various LED modules can be attached to the system to form individual custom solutions. White, colored or full RGB LED modules can be attached to the flexible system to produce individual custom solutions.

kinetic lights is a product by WHITEvoid

http://www.kinetic-lights.com
http://www.whitevoid.com

Projects 003: Test Set 1

Osanyow - Test Set 1
 
Just testing the waters...

Projects 002: Trial and Error

Lately I've been thinking about my noise project. I have some ideas of how I will structure my sets. I'm interested in exploring extreme noise and silence. I would like to add rhythms to the layers of noise. 

A few months ago I put up an ad online looking for black metal style drummers and found a few who were interested in joining my experimental project. For now I will keep it solo perhaps using a cheap drum machine (or Korg DS). The layers of noise will come from my mixer (feedback), and other found (metal) objects. I'm interested in creating specific industrial sounds such as the screech of sheet metal. Many thanks to my friend James Wright for designing the logo.

As part of my research I have been listening to the Merzbow box set (50 albums).

Crowbot Jenny

Crowbot Jenny is a shy and reclusive girl preferring to spend time surrounded by animals rather than with humans. One day she creates the Crowbot, a robot which vocalizes a variety of crow calls to control and converse with her newly formed bird army – but just what exactly will she do with her new powers?

Inspired by the book “When Species Meet” by Donna Haraway, the project sets out to explore the world of animal intelligence and animal-human interactions. Sputniko! worked with two world specialists in crow intelligence, Prof. Nathan Emery and Prof. Nicola Clayton, who provided her with samples of rook calls (the ones flocking in London parks are usually ‘rooks’, not crows) The calls were reproduced to communicate, attract, repel and engineer the behavior of rooks in Finsbury Park and Hyde Park, London.

 
 The robot makes four different crow calls - "I'm dying" "I found food" "Hello" "I'm in a fight so please come help me" in an attempt to communicate with the crows in urban wild life.

A video from Sputniko!’s initial tests conversing with crows in Finsbury Park