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.

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.

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.

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

Detroit Airport Light and Sound Tunnel

I'm interested in art/design/sound that changes the ambience of sterile boring institutionalized public spaces. I don't particularly like the music (in the documentation) but I like the concept. I like airports.

Manuel Rocha Iturbide - Ping Roll

Since I'm interested in working with balls I thought this ping pong piece is something to look at and ponder about. I don't particularly like or dislike this work. The artist explains (see below) the whole process and ideas behind his piece.

 

Sound Sculpture by Manuel Rocha Iturbide
 
The sound sculpture has 3 series of speakers that play 3 tracks with the sound of processes of ping-pong balls bouncing stochasticly, alternating with periods of silence, and with pure sinusoidal frequencies. The sound of each track alternates between each other so that the speakers sound at different times. The sinusoidal frequencies diffused through the speakers were calculated in order to be sympathetic to the natural tuning of the sculpture's alluminum plate, so that they make it vibrate and resonate. The effect of the vibrating plate over the ping-pong balls is that some of them bounce in a fixed point...continue here

Robin Minard - Outside In (Blue)

I really like the ambience on this sound installation. The blue light is really effective. I've been thinking a lot about lighting and presentation, on how it can enhance the overall experience of a sound piece.

Nam June Paik - Video Flag

 

Installation: "Video Flag" by Nam June Paik  

Sound: "Statement" by Koxbox

This is brilliant! Political and humorous.

Carsten Nicolai - syn chron

 syn chron 2004

lightweight structure, steel, aluminum, laser projection, sound system, rubber

1250 x 800 x 460cm

The intention of syn chron is to create an integral sculpture of light, sound and architecture. the translucent skin of the crystal-shaped body besides its function to define the spatial structure of the object additionally serves as an interface for a synchronized play of light and sound. the object at the same time is a room for spatial experience, an acoustic resonance body, and a projection surface. the visitor is witness to an interplay of electronic sound – transmitted onto the surface of the crystal shape – and programmed laser beams that are visible both on the out- and the inside. syn chron hereby creates an synaesthetic experience: on the level of human perception space, light and sound blend into each other to form a holistic experience.

Carsten Nicolai is a sound artist that often collaborates with Ryoji Ikeda. He's released numerous electro glitchy albums under the name Alva Noto. Below you can see it in action.

The Singapore river as a psychogeographical faultline

 

Do you know the starting or ending point of Singapore River? Or the shape that the Singapore River takes? Conceptualised and produced by 26-year-old Singaporean artist, Debbie Ding, the exhibition will examine and reconsider the role of the Singapore River through a unique mix of interactive and generative map installations.

Video Credits:
Edited by Jared Keh
Camera by Keshav Sishta
Audio composed by Simon Petre

Interesting interactive installation by Debbie Ding. For more documentation and technical details go here

Listening Post

I went to see Listening Post yesterday at the Science Museum. It took me about two hours to get there, that's London traffic for you! Once I found the entrance I was excited like a kid going to see a dinosaur exhibition for the first time. The installation by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin was captivating and humorous. The overall experience reminded me of cyberpunk films such as Hackers to name one. As soon you enter the dark room you are drawn into it, staring at 200 mini screens that resemble a home cinema screen. The seating arrangement and dramatic ambient music add to the cinematic feeling. The long intervals after the messages are displayed and read out create anticipation and tension. I did not particularly appreciate the cheesy background music that accompanied the whole process. I do like the concept of computer generated voices reading out uncensored random messages abstracted from chat rooms on the internet. The randomness made me stay longer waiting to hear more absurd messages. 

Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin's Listening Post immerses us in a rhythm of computer-synthesised voices reading, or singing out, a fluid play of real-time text fragments. The fragments are sampled from thousands of live, unrestricted internet chatrooms, bulletin boards and other online public forums. They are uncensored and unedited. Stray thoughts resonate through the space in sound and voice as texts surge, flicker, appear and disappear, at varying sizes and speeds, across a suspended grid of over 200 small electronic screens. An ambient soundtrack accompanies the activity with isolated pulses reminiscent of computer modems, clatterings, footsteps and the beeping of mechanical answering machines. At intervals darkness and silence take over, creating momentary pauses before Listening Post continues with its next movement.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/

Flying Tape

Žilvinas Kempinas is an artist I've only recently known about. When talking to a friend about my obsession with fans (ventilators) he told me about this installation he saw in Paris. He had no idea who the artist was but with some extensive research I managed to track him down. I found the work seen in Paris (Flying Tape) and learned more about the artist and his other projects. A lot of his work has sound as a by product and he's obsessed with magnetic tape.

'Flying Tape' features an enormous circular loop of tape filling the entire space, floating and spinning in mid air. The tape is held aloft by a vortex of air created by seven industrial fans pointed outward toward the gallery walls. As the tape spins, it slowly ascends and descends, allowing the viewer to step inside its circle.

The installation achieves its serene monumentality through the careful calibration of the given architectural characteristics of the space and the introduced elements of the fans. ‘Flying Tape’ emphasizes videotape’s contradictory materiality, its surprising strength and flexibility, yet barely-there lightness: the installation is both subject to, yet magically defiant of gravity.

With the growing ubiquity of digital recording technologies, the simple magic of the first VCR’s is becoming ever more remote, and the actual material of analogue videotape, slowly obsolete. Kempinas’ installation manages to re-engage with the metaphorical power of tape as a recording medium. The literal and perceptual feats that ‘Flying Tape’ achieves, serves to powerfully extend tape’s virtuality and transformative potential into an entirely new physical domain.

http://www.spencerbrownstonegallery.com/

Tube

TUBE (created at the Atelier Calder, Saché, France) can be described as a translucent tunnel of parallel lines, created with magnetic tape. Žilvinas Kempinas’ TUBE “resonates with the environment of the floating city and creates a space where vision and movement are linked by means of the body. TUBE addresses the physical and optical experiences of the viewer, and the passage of time, while creating the feeling of being inside and outside simultaneously. One can describe TUBE metaphorically or geometrically but to be appreciated it must be experienced directly. No image can convey the gradual accumulation of sensory experiences awaiting visitors who pass through the translucent tunnel of parallel lines. Kempinas changes the function of magnetic tape from an information carrier to a linear map of time and space.”
(Excerpt from the press release).

White Noise

Žilvinas Kempinas uses unspooled videotape as a material to create unique works which encourage us to consider tape as both physical object and container of information.

Moving on from his gravity-defying works, such as Double O, in which large shimmering loops of tape are levitated in space by industrial fans, White Noise more explicitly refers to videotape as moving image medium. Viewers enter a dark, almost cinematic space and are confronted by what appears to be a large projection screen of pixelated static. The screen vibrates with the fragmented black and white pixels we associate with an untuned video source. A low hum and fluttering sound reinforce the connotation. As viewers move forward, they become aware that the screen is actually hundreds of strands of videotape stretched in horizontal bands vibrated by air currents created by a multitude of fans.

The obsolescent medium of tape is employed to evoke the flickering visual sensation of noise, thus creating a formal resonance with Ryoji Ikeda’s installation of monochrome pixels and digits in the Exhibition Hall.

Kempinas shows us that videotape is more than merely a neutral carrier of virtual moving images. He uses tape to extend its virtuality, transforming it into a medium of futurity, which sculpts and redefines space.

Zilvinas Kempinas is represented by Yvon Lambert in Paris and New York, and Vartai Gallery in Vilnius

The Small Within the Great

An instrument built on a concrete wall, this installation reflects on the survival of information and our participation in that which we observe. Warning! If using headphones, keep the volume low! This can easily give you ringing in your ears. It is a more or less endless drone derived from data of quantum decay; truly random, but also dependent on the act of observation. The viewer(s) is entwined with the sound in a kind of communication. Largely inspired by David Bohm's ideas of active information and mutual participation. More recordings and information forthcoming on my own website. The recordings on this video in particular are quite aggressive, while at other times the sound can be quite sweet, reminiscent of sitar harmonics. While part of my master's thesis, this exhibition was mainly a proof of concept. Future installations of this work would use a more robust BLDC motor system, as well as proper instrument strings.
by Barrie James Sutcliffe