Bots

FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival

Bots presents a computer-controlled society through a series of algorithmically controlled humanoid avatars that appear on physical carpets using augmented reality (AR). Real-time performances synthesize human behavioral patterns into a formalized digital social study. Omnipresent, combined with our devices and incorporated into virtual environments, the work reminds us of our own digitalized world, in which we are surrounded by invisible bots.

Bio

Giulia Bowinkel (born 1983) and Friedemann Banz (born 1980) live in Berlin and have worked together under the name Banz & Bowinkel since 2009. In 2007 they graduated from the Art Academy with Albert Oehlen and started making art with computers . His work encompasses computer-generated imagery, animation, augmented reality, virtual realities and installations.

Pollinator Pathmaker
Pollinator Pathmaker is not just about large public gardens: at pollinator.art you can use the algorithmic tool for free to make your own garden artwork. Simply follow the steps in the algorithmic toolbox to select your garden conditions and play with how the algorithm solves the problem of empathy. It then generates a garden design for you; each design created is a one-off edition of the artwork.

StickMan
StickMan is a minimal but full-body exoskeleton that algorithmically actuates the artist with 6 degrees-of-freedom. It is a gesture generating system capable of 64 possible combinations. Sensors on StickMan generate sounds that augment the pneumatic noise and register the limb movements. A ring of 6 speakers directs and circulates the sounds.

Dirty Geometry:Cloud
Dirty Geometry: Cloud is a six-panel folded screen generated using algorithmic computation with random variables. Between the drawing and the surface lies an infra-thin space perpetually reconstituted; one hue replaces another as the light shifts outside; becoming more intense, now

BECHA-KPACHA
BECHA-KPACHA is an algorithmic music video for the electronic musician COH. The song’s tittle (pronounced Vesna Krasna) was taken from an old Russian poem and roughly translates “Spring the beautiful”, though it can also mean “Spring the red.” The animation reference’s traditional Russian folk patterns, commonly known as Hohloma. In these patterns, colorful plant leaves expand and twist around one another while fruit grows along side. These patterns were a starting point for this sound-responsive animation.

Not allowed for algorithmic audiences
Un gran numero di spettatori online oggigiorno è principalmente costituito da algoritmi. Gli algoritmi sono addestrati sulle informazioni uditive, che vengono prodotte e caricate dagli esseri umani. Nel video “Non consentito per il pubblico algoritmico”, un assistente personale intelligente (IPA), situato ad Atene, in Grecia, mostra un comportamento strano. Prende in prestito un avatar e appare davanti ai suoi utenti. Per un breve periodo di tempo, per sette giorni consecutivi prima che si spenga per sempre, va in sette monologhi. Durante la sua durata, l’assistente digitale è riuscito a scansionare l’intero contenuto di Internet e raccogliere ogni tipo di informazione, informazioni che desidera condividere.

Steampunk Pavilion
Steampunk is a pavilion constructed from steam-bent hardwood, designed by Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram), Soomeen Hahm Design and Igor Pantic for the 5th edition of Tallinn Architecture Biennale.
“Steampunk explores a path to rethink applications and traditions of craft in pursuit of their evolution.” Soomeen Hahm Design
“The structure challenges the idea of the primitive hut –showing how, by using algorithmic logic, simple raw materials can be turned into a highly complex and inhabitable structure”.Gilles Retsin

Brazil Now
BRAZIL NOW is a composition that addresses increasing militarization and surveillance within urban areas. Its geographical and acoustic reference is São Paulo, the largest megacity in Latin America. The piece is based on field recordings that capture the symptoms of a Latin American variant of turbo-capitalism with its distinctive acoustic features. Eruptive public demonstrations on the streets are often accompanied by loud, carnivalesque elements. These are controlled by a militarized infrastructure, openly demonstrating a readiness to deploy violence. The sonic documents are analyzed by machine learning algorithms searching for acoustic memes, textures, and rhythms that could be symptomatic for predominant social forces. The algorithmic results are then used as a base for a score and its interpretation through a musical ensemble. The piece drafts a phantasmatic auditory landscape built on the algorithmic evaluation of urban conflict zones.

Pollutive Ends
With the art installation Pollutive Ends the artist Thijs Biersteker shows the impact of 1 cigarette butt on our environment and waters. The impact is made visible by moving small elements of real polluted water hypnotically right in front of the visitors eyes through an intricate tube system. The algorithmic driven pumping system calculates the amount of visitors that are in the museum, the likelihood that they smoke and the amount of pollution that they would generate.

The normalizing machine
The Normalizing Machine is an interactive installation presented as an experimental research in machine-learning. It aims to identify and analyze the image of social normalcy. Each participant is asked to point out who looks most normal from a line up of previously recorded participants. The machine analyzes the participant decisions and adds them to its’ aggregated algorithmic image of normalcy.

Exformation, an interactive installation inspired by the concept of “exformation,” was developed for a composition by Jesper Nordin performed by the Diotima string quartet and combines musical, luminous and colorimetric scores. Around the musicians, positioned on a technically equipped stage, three aluminium-edged cubes with LEDs mounted on circular rails move and angle their light in keeping with an algorithmic programme based on analysis of the spectrum, timbre and intensity of the music. This sensitive object becomes a total composition, a poetic, digital entity responding to the work played at its centre.

Untitled: (A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine)
What does it mean to be human? At first glance a simple question, the idea of being human is an unstable construct, continuously recrafted. Recent technological innovations allow us to redesign ourselves profoundly— from networked prosthetics and artificial intelligence, to the genetic code of life itself. Can our behaviors be reduced to algorithms? Can our bodies be upgraded with nonorganic integrations? Can sentience itself by manufactured in a lab? This set of nine sculptures examines personhood from anatomical, psychological, genetic, biochemical, behavioral, algorithmic, personal narrative and memory. In many ways, this installation is an emotional confrontation with being quantifiable.

Self-contained II
A neural network, trained to see the world as variations of the artist’s body, enacts a process of algorithmic interpretation that contends with a body as a subject of multiplicity. After training on over 30,000 images of the artist, this neural network synthesizes surreal humanoid figures unconstrained by physics, biology and time; figures that are simultaneously one and many. The choice of costumes and the movements performed by the artist to generate the training images were specifically formulated to optimize the legibility of the artist within this computational system. self-contained explores the algorithmic shaping of our bodies, attempting to answer the question: how does one represent themselves in a data set? Building on the first iteration of the series, the synthetic figures in self-contained II proliferate to the point of literally exploding. Through the arc of self-contained II, this body that grows, multiples, and dissolves never ceases to be more than a single body.

Algorithmic Architecture
This short film is intended to encourage a creative audience to seek out Kevin Slavin’s talk Those Algorithms Which Govern Our Lives. It employs an effect which takes place in Google Earth when its 3D street photography and 2D satellite imagery don’t register correctly. This glitch is applied as a metaphor for the way that our 21st century supercities are physically changing to suit the needs of computer algorithms rather than human employees.

Until I die
This installation operates on unique batteries that generate electricity using my blood. The electric current produced by the batteries powers a small electronic algorithmic synth module. This module creates generative sound composition that plays via a small speaker. The blood used in the installation was stored up gradually over 18 months. The conservation included a number of manipulations to preserve the blood’s chemical composition, color, homogeneity and sterility to avoid bacterial contamination. The total amount of blood conserved was around 4.5 liters; it was then diluted to yield 7 liters, the amount required for the installation. The blood was diluted with distilled water and preservatives such as sodium citrate, antibiotics, antifungal agents, glucose, glycerol etc. The last portion of blood (200ml) was drawn from my arm during the performance presentation, shortly before the launch of the installation.

geist.xyz
A synthetic ghost shifts simulated textiles from passive matter to live organisms. They behave like apparitions in an artificial choreography, with movements that are imaginary yet familiar. Like a constant metamorphosis, the same sequence gets transformed over and over again. At each step, all aspects of the designs are modified, from algorithmic pattern to color scheme to fabric behaviour. The results are meandering layers of style changes. A linear montage shows the intricate details. Shuffled layers of metronomic sounds emphasize the transformation fluctuating in and out of sync.

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.

The Varieties of Human Facial Expression
12 bit version
“The Varieties” is an algorithmic exploration of human facial expression. Six muscles on each side of the face are triggered in succession by means of electrical stimulation, resulting in 4096 different facial expressions.

Fifty Sisters, Series of fifty evolved digital plant images
Fifty Sisters is comprised of fifty 1m x 1m images of computer synthesised plant-forms, algorithmically “grown” from computer code using artificial evolution and generative grammars. Each plant-like form is derived from the primitive graphic elements of oil company logos.

1194D^3
Initially started as a tweak of 115C8 in 2013, one of Kwok’s Algorithmic Creatures based on finite subdivision, 1194D is an experiment on multiple geometric creatures co-existing within a tetrahedron-based grid environment. In 2017, The project was improved and revised into an immersive triple-screen audiovisual installation as 1194D^3 for .zip Future Rhapsody art exhibition curated by Wu Juehui & Yan Yan at Today Art Museum in Beijing, China. The entire visual is programmed and generated using Processing. All stages are later composed and exported using Premiere.

The lips, the lisp, the slip of the tongue
The video explores voice modelling, voice donation, algorithmic prediction and the incomputable. The work examines in parallel the process of modelling the mouth to the process of modelling the voice, questioning modelling as a scientific/technological technique, by considering it as a means of producing reality, rather than merely an observational tool. What leaks from the model? Can the multiplicity and complexity of the voice be contained in an algorithmic model?
file sp 2019 videoart

Cellogram
composed by James Tenney
performed by Ashley Walters – cello
James Tenney made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation.

when you are close to me i shiver
sound design: Alexander Martinz
“when you are close to me I shiver” is an algorithmically controlled live simulation, a real-time generated virtual reality that takes place in a version of the future in which humans, out of desperation, gather in masses on the last remaining piece of land. Inspired by the walrus scene in the documentary “Our Planet” narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films, the project proposes an intense scenario encompassing our environmental and personal crises. It reflects on how we identify and connect ourselves in different realities while addressing the human condition in a world in ecological and therefore social crisis. On the tablets, virtual cameras scan the environment from various point of views, like surveillance drones. On the main screen, a similar camera randomly targets and focuses on different situations while a familiar voice-over narrates the tragic story.

Field and Loops

Loops and Fields, is a collection of drawings that resonate sympathetically to the electromagnetic fields within the gallery. These graphite drawings function as graphic antennas and explore the qualities and inherent nature of a combination of hand-drawn and mathematically generated forms. Delving into algorithmic structures, fractals and the chaotic nature of the hand drawn line, these drawings are an exploration of conductive materials and the possibilities for drawing electronic components. When connected to a sound system they make audible their interior activity and reveal the energy that exists in the immediate environment.Relying on the basic principles of the directional loop antenna, the drawings in Loops and Fields, like any receiving antenna, convert an electromagnetic wave into a voltage; the loop antenna is particularly sensitive to magnetic fields and outputs a voltage proportional to that field. Monitoring this activity allows us to experience the local fields and generates a site-specific and dynamic aural landscape.The different shapes and line qualities that make up the algorithmically generated and stencilled drawings come from thinking about the possibilities of extending a line. Fractal mathematics and the research into fractal antennas has focused on reducing the overall size and space an antenna needs to occupy. My interest is in the frequency range at the lower regions of the spectrum, where the wavelength is large; so my interpretation of recent antenna design research has led me to explore the possibilities for drawing antennas that can receive large wavelengths, on something the size of a standard piece of fine art paper.

نوفا جيانغ
Ideogenetic Machine
“Ideogenetic Machine” is an interactive installation that incorporates portraits of participants into an algorithmically generated comic book. A camera captures the portrait live while an algorithm transforms the photographic image into a “line drawing”. Face detection is utilized to insert-code generated blank speech bubbles into the narrative. The software creates never repeating compositions using a set of rules that approximate the compositional decisions made by a human comic book author. The comic is projected live, and consists of the algorithmically processed portraits as well as randomly chosen story elements from a database of drawings. The story elements are drawn by the artist, mostly illustrating speculative narratives based on current news and events. A participant can email him or herself the finished comic as a PDF file.

FILE FESTIVAL

the Indistinct Notion of an Object Trajectory

Ryota Matsumoto’s drawings develop and demonstrate the hybrid/multi-layered process where varying scale, juxtaposition of different forms, intertwined textures/tones are applied to reinvent and question the spatial conditions of architectural drawings. His work explore a hybrid drawing technique combining both traditional media (ink, acrylic, and graphite) and digital media (algorithmic processing, scripting and image compositing with custom software ) .
FILE FESTIVAL

First Subtle Sign of Evolving Drones

Architecture, Art & Design – Ryota Matsumoto’s drawings develop and demonstrate the hybrid/multi-layered process where varying scale, juxtaposition of different forms, intertwined textures/tones are applied to reinvent and question the spatial conditions of architectural drawings. His work explore a hybrid drawing technique combining both traditional media (ink, acrylic, and graphite) and digital media (algorithmic processing, scripting and image compositing with custom software ) .
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emerging colorspace
Julian Adenauer and Michael Haas
Emerging Colorspace was a robotic drawing installation, realized by the Berlin based duo of artists, designers and inventors Julian Adenauer and Michael Haas, aka Sonice Development, as part of the Red Never Follows exhibition the Saatchi Gallery in London last summer. A new version of the studio’s Vertwalker, a machine with the ability to move on vertical surfaces, walking on buildings, and crawling on interior walls. The machine autonomously applied paint to the wall using a marker, referencing the vertical streets in Minority Report, the flying cars in Bladerunner and 5th Element, or Spiderman, the Silver Surfer and the Green Goblin – just to name a few sources of inspiration that expressed the supernatural. Thousands of lines drawn with different colors gradually formed an increasingly dense colorspace that emerged during the more than 200 exhibition hours, while the wandering behavior of the machine followed simple algorithmic rules with random elements. The result was a web that constantly changed, and never looked the same, exploring new territories and the future in a way ordinary mortals can’t.

Михаэль Ансмейер
Subdivided Columns

The subdivided columns are purely algorithmic forms. They are undrawable using conventional means – whether by pen or by mouse – as they have too much detail and differentiation. Knowledge and experience are acquired through search, demanding heuristics that work in the absence of categorization.

video

Algorithmic search for Love

Struct- Generative Realtime Audio-Visual Environment
The target of “Struct” was to create installation which could make immersive environment inside the space of public event dedicated to the opening of the office of an architectural company UNK Projects. It was planned to make this installation fully autonomic during the several hours as well as there was an idea to hold the public interested and immersed into the space of environment during the all period of time.

The main conception of the installation is to create the second alternative scale inside the internal space of the office. It was realized screen projection for this with the size of 18×4 meters and taken almost whole the length of the interior. The Animated surface was projected as the extension of the super-graphic situated on the facade of office`s building. The external graphic was created by Vladimir Garanin. The first one layer is the super-graphic onto the facade and another one layer is the real-time generative graphic inside the interior. The visual image and algorithmic sound of the whole structure are connected each other and are forming the whole organism.