Soft Manipulator
A playful interactive installation where the audience experiments with rhythms, mechanics and objects. Everyday items like glasses, pots, as well as small music instruments are placed on a light plattform. Seven robotic mechanic devices can be manipulated interactively by the audience, manipulating the sound of the objects. The six robotic mechanics beat the objects, creating a constantly changing polyrhytmic web of sound and rhythm.
Through the Membrane
We define the space around us by observing and perceiving light and shadow. That is to say, our perception shapes our basic understanding of this sensory world, and hence the “reality” we believe in. If our experiential knowledge and awareness of space are challenged, would our definition of a “real phenomenon” also be changed? Through the Membrane utilizes optical polarizers to change how light passes through space. The installation does not rely on any electromechanical devices. Simply with creative use of material and structure, it presents a super-sensory experience in space where reality and illusion are inextricably juxtaposed.
Eyeris
Eyeris is a cultural prosthetic that renders the user dependent on human touch for sight. While many of today’s digital devices extend our abilities to connect with each other, disability of our current digital devices can been seen through our loss of tangible human interaction. I made this piece in trying to explore the importance of human interdependency in a society living under the myth of autonomy driven by technological symbiosis between man and computer. Eyeris is a mechanically operated electronic device powered by digital input that is deliberately over-engineered to call attention to the social behavioral conditioning imposed on us through less discreet technological devices that we assimilate on a daily basis.
The Immortal
A number of life-support machines are connected to each other, circulating liquids and air in attempt to mimic a biological structure.
The Immortal investigates human dependence on electronics, the desire to make machines replicate organisms and our perception of anatomy as reflected by biomedical engineering.
A web of tubes and electric cords are interwoven in closed circuits through a Heart-Lung Machine, Dialysis Machine, an Infant Incubator, a Mechanical Ventilator and an Intraoperative Cell Salvage Machine. The organ replacement machines operate in orchestrated loops, keeping each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.
Salted water acts as blood replacement: throughout the artificial circulatory system minerals are added and filtered out again, the blood gets oxygenated via contact with the oxygen cycle, and an ECG device monitors the system’s heartbeat. As the fluid pumps around the room in a meditative pulse, the sound of mechanical breath and slow humming of motors resonates in the body through a comforting yet disquieting soundscape.Life support machines are extraordinary devices; computers designed to activate our bodies when anatomy fails, hidden away in hospital wards. Although they are designed as the ultimate utilitarian appliances, they are extremely meaningful and carry a complex social, cultural and ethical subtext. While life prolonging technologies are invented as emergency measures to combat or delay death, my interest lies in considering these devices as a human enhancement strategy.This work is a continuation of my investigation of the patient as a cyborg, questioning the relationship between medicine and techno- fantasies about mechanical bodies, hyper abilities and posthumanism.
Equilibrium Variant
This work has the purpose of exploring the occurrence of the Larsen effect (also known as feedback) through the use of mobile devices in a three-dimensional space. The distinctive screech of the Larsen effect typically occurs when a microphone catches the sound emitted by a speaker. It engages when the microphone is located too close to the speaker, and gets in the way of its frequency. The microphone amplifies and reproduces the speaker’s frequency with an ever-increasing width, virtually unlimited, in practice stopped by the amplifier’s clip. On a ground support, two mechanical arms are located. At the end of one arm there is a microphone, and on the end of the other there is a speaker. A software, created with this specific purpose, manages the position of the arms in a dynamic way, and provides that the distance between the microphone and the speaker never causes the amplifier to clip. This way, the system tends to reach an equilibrium that is physically impossible to attain. The struggle to balance creates an acoustic and visual dimension that is never the same: the frequency of feedback and the movements of the mechanical arms are always different and change in real time.
True/False
True/False is a kinetic sculpture composed of arrays of circular black metal segments set in mechanical columns. Interlocking and rotating around fluorescent light tubes, the cylinders cover or expose the light to display an endless number of patterns. The transformation of the sculpture is based on the shifting elements and their correlation to each other. As the segments do not move independently, for any of the cylinders on a column to change, the segments affected must work in unison to achieve the command. Reminiscent of devices originally used for calculations, such as Turing machines, the sound originates from the mechanical movement of the moving parts thus making the algorithm audible. The rhythm of »true/false« is captivating as variations in the visual choreography result in distinctive changes in its soundscape. Through the generation of algorithmic patterns and the repetition of endless tasks, »true/false« transforms itself into something more than the sum of its elements to reveal the beauty hidden within a basic algorithm.
Electro-cución
“I am fascinated with the physicality of low-tech manual devices and mechanical systems. I am aroused by their shapes, sounds, and gestures, which are beautiful descriptions of their own functions. Industrial materials—stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, plastics, and rubbers—seduce me. Artifacts of disappearing industry, I find strange and beautiful shapes in their debris that allude to sexual operations, violent actions, mysterious purposes. Their potential triggers my thought process.”
Cliff Hanger
Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher started their collaborative practice in 2002. Trained as a visual artist, Jeff Shore develops the visible sculptures and mechanisms, while Jon Fisher builds the electronics, writes the software, and creates the original soundtracks; for this he uses both digital and analog audio sources. The result of their collaboration is a series of kinetic devices and installations that generate live animated video and musical compositions. Similar to cinema storytelling, the movement in the pieces relate to the accompanying soundtrack or animation, and similar to a theater of automata, the pieces create precise and captivating sequential events. Bridging high and low-tech devices and instruments, the collaborative team creates mechanically activated moments of wonder, explores the relationship between automatism and chance, and comments on the impact of technology interfaces in our lives.
The Harmonic Series
Created by Manuela Donoso and Luisa Pereira, The Harmonic Series is a collection of mechanical devices , software, sculptures and prints that explore the relationship between musical and visual harmony.Inspired by the nineteenth century mathematician Jules Lissajous who invented a device to visualize sound vibrations using two tuning forks and a beam of light reflected from one mirror to the next to a screen, Manuela and Luisa have re-created and extended this experiment using recent tools. An electronic version of the device replaces the tuning forks with microphones and speakers, allowing people to sing different musical intervals, and contrast the resulting figures with the more chaotic ones generated by percussive sounds. An application plays groups of three notes and plots 3d Lissajous figures for their frequency ratios. The frequency ratios for major, minor and diminished chords are 4:5:6, 10:12:15 and 20:24:29 respectively. These chords were plotted using the app, and then printed as posters and sculptures that reveal a tight relationship between aural and visual harmony.