Serendiptichord

The result of a cross-disciplinary investigation spanning fashion, technology, music and dance, the Serendiptichord is a wearable musical instrument that invites the user (or movician) to explore a soundscape through touch and movement. This curious device is housed in a bespoke box and viewed as part of a performance. Unpacked and explored on and around the body, the Serendiptichord only reveals its full potential through the intrepid curiosity of its wearer. Adhering to the body like an extended limb, this instrument is best described as choreophonic prosthetic. Referencing the architectural silhouette of a musical instrument and the soft fabrication of fashion and upholstery, it is designed to entice the movician to explore its surface through touch, physical manipulation and expressive movement. Although this acoustic device can be mastered alone, it also holds subtle openings for group interaction.

Martela
FILE FESTIVAL
Tactila is an art form whose medium is the sense of touch (tact) which is independent from the all the other ones and has its own intelligence, imagination, memory, perception, and sensation. It is well known that vision and sound have hegemony in arts and in other disciplines. Tactila takes place in time and, therefore, can be recorded and have various forms of notation for subsequent executions. That is why its development became possible only now, thanks to mechatronic and robotic systems which are compatible with machine languages.
The creation of tactile works involves a (tact) composition, which can be made through handmade notation and played on a keyboard or directly on the computer of the tactile machine ( robot ).
Tactile machines can present numerous tactile possibilities through points, vectors, and textures with varying rhythms and intensities, and be run in different extensions and locations of our body.

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The first tactile machine is called “Martela”. It is a tactile robot comprised of 27 engines subdivided into three squares (3 x 3), i.e., each square has 9 engines. Each engine corresponds to a matrix point, so we have 27 tactile units that allow to touch the user’s body with various intensities.

CANDESCENCE
Candescence is a performative light sculpture. Acoustically responsive spheres are activated by sound and touch, designed to inhabit and alter perceptions of architectural space. The installation consists of one or multiple spheres, acting in a spatial dialogue with the audience. Human interaction triggers an ascendance of vision, light and sound in a cyclic loop of which the individual is integral.

Coro pêndulo
Pendulum Choir é uma peça coral original para 9 vozes A Cappella e 18 macacos hidráulicos. O coro é constituindo por um corpo vivo e sonoro. Esse corpo se expressa por meio de vários estados físicos. Sua plasticidade varia de acordo com sua sonoridade. Varia entre sons abstratos, sons repetitivos e sons líricos ou narrativos. Os corpos dos cantores e suas vozes brincam com e contra a gravidade. Eles se tocam e se evitam, criando polifonias vocais sutis. Ou, apoiados por sons eletrônicos, rompem sua coesão e explodem em um voo lírico ou se dobram em um ritual obsessivo e sombrio. O órgão viaja da vida à morte em uma alegoria robótica onde a complexidade tecnológica e o lirismo dos corpos em movimento se combinam em uma obra com acentos prometéicos.
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Pendulum Choir is an original choral piece for 9 A Cappella voices and 18 hydraulic jacks. The choir is constituted by a living and sonorous body. This body expresses itself through various physical states. Its plasticity varies according to its sound. It varies between abstract sounds, repetitive sounds and lyrical or narrative sounds. The singers’ bodies and their voices play with and against gravity. They touch and avoid each other, creating subtle vocal polyphonies. Or, supported by electronic sounds, they break their cohesion and explode in a lyrical flight or bend in an obsessive and dark ritual. The organ travels from life to death in a robotic allegory where technological complexity and the lyricism of moving bodies combine in a work with Promethean accents.

Chimes
Chimes is an interactive, audio-reactive experience that translates the sound of a room into digital wind, setting in motion an exploration of space, music and time. The installation invites the viewer to surrender to the interplay of spatial sound, touch, air, movement and noise and to discover ever new facets in a constantly changing environment.

Affinity
Affinity is an immersive interactive light and sound installation inspired by the human brain. Each light globe represented a memory, as people approached Affinity different memories could be heard. When people touched the memory a light would trigger, the longer they touched the further their light would travel throughout the sculpture. Affinity features 62 different colour combinations and 112 points of interaction.

Kilo Ohm
Erwin Stache is a German composer and sound artist who designs installations for specific locations. His Kilo Ohm – which you can of course try out yourself – uses the electrical resistance of the player’s skin to generate sound. Each new touch sounds different.

Upload not complete
The work magnifies the process of virtual and real fusion, which is the process of uploading human consciousness to digital space. When the visual perception has been lost, can people still recognize the body through the touch and sound of wind, sound and vibration everywhere? Experiencers use non-visual senses, experience media art, and cooperate with the Taiwanese Non-Visual Aesthetic Education Association to create a digital space where the computer can fully understand the location of the experiencer in the space, allowing the experiencer to listen, move, touch objects, feel the vibration and come to know the space.

After All
After All is a wooden, robotic interpretation of the Phonautograph, a 19th century apparatus created by the Frenchman, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. His invention predated Edison’s phonograph by 17 years and promised a new kind of visual literacy for those who could learn to read, translate, and recite its mechanically created marks. The air pressure from a voice speaking into a cone pushed and deformed the surface of a sensitive diaphragm to which a boar’s bristle was attached. Inflection in the voice moved the diaphragm and the bristle touched a revolving soot-covered wheel, scratching marks in response to air pressure changes. The marks could be ‘read back’ by those literate in a sound-to-writing technique.

Scale
‘scale’ is an interspecies art project: an audience-interactive installation that involves nocturnal electric fish from the Amazon River Basin. Twelve different species of these fish comprise a choir whose sonified electrical fields provide the source tones for an immersive audiovisual environment. The fish are housed in individual tanks configured in a custom-built sculptural arc of aluminum frames placed around a central podium. The electrical field from each fish is translated into sound, and is thus heard — unprocessed or with digital effects added, with immediate control over volume via a touchscreen panel — through a 12-channel surround sound system, and with LED arrays under each tank for visual feedback. All software is custom-designed. Audience members interact as deejays with the system. Amongst the goals of the project is our desire to foster wider public awareness of these remarkable creatures, their importance to the field of neurological research, and the fragility of their native ecosystem.The project leaders comprise visual/conceptual artist Marlena Novak, composer/sound designer Jay Alan Yim, and neural engineer Malcolm MacIver. MacIver’s research focuses on sensory processing and locomotion in electric fish and translating this research into bio-inspired technologies for sensing and underwater propulsion through advanced fish robots. Novak and Yim, collaborating as ‘localStyle’, make intermedia works that explore perceptual themes, addressing both physical and psychological thresholds in the context of behavior, society/politics, and aesthetics.

sound cloud
London-based designer kazuhiro yamanaka has created the ‘sound cloud’ a light-emitting quantum glass speaker system installation for saazs ‘a glass house’ program. the structure is composed of five interactive monolithic glass panels, formed with the intention of modelling the integration of innovative glass within architecture and design. the sound and light radiating from ‘sound cloud’ shift in unison, their synchronization may be altered by the viewer as they adjust their aural and visual experience by means of a touch-screen controller.
yamanaka aspired for the visitors to ‘be able to hear the sound move from one to another, jumping back and forth and echoing from the panels.’
a sound module is attached to each panel. as it vibrates,the three layers of glass move at a frequency, which creates optimum sound quality. the sound for the installation was developed by the france-based sound designer, gling-glang. yamanaka and gling-glang devised a soundscape by which ‘sound cloud’ visitors were able to sense the sculptural construction of the music in walking through the installation’s glass-paneled pathway.
the glass is outfitted with a light-emitting system known as ‘LED in glass’, invented by quantum glass. through this technology, the panels become a source of light. the ‘sound cloud’ is illuminated as the LED bars are fitted around the edge of the panel in order to direct beams of light through the edge of the extra clear glass sheet. as a result, light refraction occurs from the front side by means of a white enamel screen print on the opposite side.
yamanaka chose to slightly obscure the brightness of the glass sound system by creating a thin layer from millions of light dots, culminating in a cloud-like shape.

LOVERS
Computer-controlled, five-channel video/sound installation with five video projectors, eight-channel sound system, and slide projectors […] As an image, a pair of lovers often suggests a castle of exclusion. With the sexual liberation of the last few decades, the word now has more to do with physical coupling than with the sublimity of “true love.” AIDS has added a new dimension of wariness to this pairing. The life-size dancers in Lovers are drained of life. Projected onto the black walls of a square room, the naked figures have a spectral quality. Their movements are simple and repetitive. Back and forth, they walk and run with animal grace. Their actions become familiar over time, so that it is a surprise when two of the translucent bodies come together in a virtual embrace. These ostensible lovers–more overlapping than touching–are not physically entwined.

Cloud
Liz Nurenberg: “Cloud” My Sculptural objects act as experience stations where viewers can form relationships both to the work and to other viewers. Interactivity allows me to explore intimacy, personal space, and how the body physically connects with something while confusing the line between viewers and viewed. The handmade nature of my work evokes intimacy, suggesting the presence of human effort or authorship. Sound acts as an inner voice, which can create a subtle sense of awkwardness. These touches come together to build a scene where interactions happen and narrative forms.

Conservation of Intimacy

Made of pine, latex, music wire, copper, nylon line, paper, pens and video surveillance. It measured 20′ x 35′ x 26′ at Southern Exposdure.
A couple rocking on the bench sends air pulses to another room causing balls to move and pens to transcribe their motions onto paper. The paper is moved by a third person on a stationary bike. The couple on the bench can watch the balls on a video monitor before them where the balls appear to bounce into the air. The motion is delayed and languid as though under water. Action is best when the couple is moving slowly together. As visitors work together to animate the mechanisms, they create a theatre for themselves and each other. By encouraging participation, and touch the pieces coax visitors to engage their bodies as well as their minds. The way that pieces move and feel and sound as you rock them, pedal, crank and press against them applies the kinesthetic comprehension’s of childhood to the tasks of philosophy. Bernie Lubell’s interactive installations have evolved from his studies in both psychology and engineering. As participants play with his whimsical wood machines, they become actors in a theater of their own imagining.

It Only Happens All of the Time

Constructed by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon within San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) new exhibition series Control: Technology in Culture, It Only Happens All of the Time is an installation that shapes sound, movement, and perception. Architectural in ambition, the installation tasks visitors with exploring a room lined with a droning 11.1.4 surround sound system and custom sound-dampening acoustic panels in order to foreground what the artist describes as the “the exchange between moving within the sound, moving within the sculpture, moving with someone else” and yielding an “intimacy” in the process. Borrowing the materials and geometries of the acoustic panels used in anechoic chambers and acoustic testing labs, Gordon’s immersive sonic environment deploys clinical sound design to engender exploration and interaction.Positioned in the centre of Gordon’s space is “Love Seat”, a pair of adjoined enclosures where visitors can sit and listen. While sharing a common sightline—but physically separated—listeners can enjoy a moment together, each within (relative) acoustic isolation. In the essay accompanying the exhibition, Control: Technology in Culture curator Ceci Moss succinctly describes Gordon’s approach as “sound modulating mood” to “both commune and command” those entering the space.As would be expected, Gordon went to great lengths to sculpt the acoustics within It Only Happens All of the Time and the exhibition saw her working closely with specialists at Meyer Sound Laboratories. She touches on her process briefly in the video below and the Creator’s Project post on the project is worth delving into, as it provides some worthwhile ‘making of’ details as well as comments from collaborators Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) and Zackery Belanger.

vinyl+ • Expanded Timecode Vinyl
FILE FESTIVAL

A processing sketch is used to generate virtual objects being projected on white timecode-vinyl. These objects can either be placed randomly or by the user via the computer keyboard or an external midi controller. If the record starts to turn, the virtual objects will move with the speed of the record. If a virtual object touches the turntables needle, it will trigger an animation and the playback of a sound. This is possible because the vinyl’s timecode provides information about the record’s playback speed and the position of the needle, thus enabling to synchronize the movement of the turntable with the movement of the projection and to calculate collisions of virtual objects with the turntable’s needle. In vinyl+, an analog medium at the same time acts as a carrier and an interface for virtual audio- and video-objects.

Symphony in D Minor

‘Symphony in D Minor’ is an interactive sound and video installation on an epic scale. A thunderstorm contained within a series of large hand cast resin sculptures, each individual form is a unique instrument hanging from the ceiling. Suspended just within reach and activated by touch, the viewer sets the symphony in motion by pushing the forms through the air to trigger the various sound elements of the storm. Sensors relay individual recordings of thunder, lightning, wind and rain with alternating intensities to a full-scale sound system. Acting as both conductor and musician, the viewer creates an evolving composition out of atmospheric sounds, forging an environment that envelops the audience. Housed within each piece are 2 video projectors employing mapping software to evenly fill the surface of the forms. Like giant illuminated pendulums each sculpture radiates video projections that in their dormant state display abstractions of water droplets and slow moving clouds. As the sensors detect movement different ranges initiate more visual elements of the storm. Once activated, the form then shifts to a swirling torrent of clouds.

New Tangible Interfaces TTI

Interactive surfaces makes everyday objects multi-functional and fun. Reactive technologies have now enabled normal interfaces with new functions and new possibilities. The role of the surface is changing radically, according to how it’s designed and incorporated with objects. My proposal was to re-define the role of the surface in future lifestyle, exploring how surfaces can be an integrated as part of a product or environment.

TTI, (standing for Tangible Textural Interface) is a new sound system that embeds a tactile surface. TTI has flexibility that enables people to physically touch and feel the response through the controls and physical morph of the surface. TTI delivers new aesthetics through integrated flexible surfaces as interface material unlike adapting conventional materials for interfaces such as plastic or glass. Unlike existing 2D interfaces, TTI has a curved 3D surface opening up new possibilities in making flexible forms and shapes within the interface.

TTI consists of 3 main functions, backwards and forwards, volume control and equaliser, having a physical feedback and control interface within one surface. As you control the functions, the left surface physically responds to the controls. Tactile surface also responds to the beat of the music.