Sounding Qubits

FILE 2024 | Quantico
International Electronic Language Festival
Eduardo Reck Miranda – Sounding Qubits – Brazil

Although he has learned classical musical instruments since childhood, Eduardo Miranda’s favorite tool for composing is the computer. The researcher has been delving into artificial intelligence and innovative computing methods for compositing for some time, as they offer fresh insights and ideas beyond his own.

A quantum computer deals with information encoded as qubits. A qubit is to a quantum computer what a bit is to a digital one: a basic unit of information. In hardware, qubits exist in the subatomic world. They are subject to the laws of quantum mechanics.

Quantum computers are like super-powered versions of classical digital computers. While a digital computer processes data in a linear, step-by-step fashion, a quantum computer can explore many possibilities at once.

Operating a quantum computer requires different ways of thinking about encoding and processing information. This is where composers can benefit greatly. This technology is destined to facilitate the development of unprecedented ways of creating music.

Bio

Composer who works at the intersection of music, science and new technologies. His background as an artificial intelligence scientist and classical composer with early involvement in avant-garde pop music informs his distinctive music. He has composed for BBC Radio 3, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He is a professor at the University of Plymouth and a research associate at Quantinuum, where he explores music composition with quantum computers.

Simple Harmonic Motion study #5d

Behind the different incarnations, at the heart of the project lies the concept of creating complexity from simplicity. Through the use of custom software, a number of ‘agents’ are created and assigned a simple behavior. Each follow an extremely simple repetitive pattern of movement and sound. On their own, each agent is relatively monotonous, basic and mechanical. The repetition duration, motion and sound of each agent is precisely tuned such that the collection of all agents moving together, creates a unique, evolving and complex composition – both visually and sonically.The seed of inspiration comes from the motion of pendulums and other fundamental oscillatory phenomena which exhibit simple harmonic motion. The project extracts and amplifies these complex patterns, both through visual abstraction and emphasis; and also through sonifying the phenomena and creating musical patterns driven by the same equations that dictate the behaviour.

Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons – Austria

An abstract painting in motion, with colors and shapes exploding and transforming to the rhythm of the music. The dynamic element is not trapped in a static image, but can unfold in time and space.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons by The Intangible

Distortions of The Past

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Distortions of The Past – Austria

Fractal elements that resemble cosmic structures evoke the illusion of traveling through a fractal universe. Rules, in the form of prompts, and chance interact with each other to create a visual fantasy.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Distortions of the Past by Dreamstate Logic

Magic Drops

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Magic Drops – Austria

Moving abstract structures and grimacing masks, colors that change and pulse to the rhythm of the music create a psychedelic experience that embodies the spirit of Techno.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Music: Chris Robert

In Love

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – In Love – Austria

Fractal structures move to the sound of progressive house as the virtual camera navigates through this fractal world. To intensify the psychedelic quality, a second layer contrasts with the movement, resulting in a joyful madness of colors.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Music: Y do I

Brain Entity

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Luigi Novellino (aka PintoCreation) – Brain Entity – Italy

In a laboratory, a brain-like organism grows rapidly, integrating with technology and evolving into a giant entity that manipulates objects with its mind. He hypnotizes the city, absorbing energy and creating patterns. Efforts to stop him fail, signaling a battle to understand existence. This symbolizes a new era of coexistence, urging us to embrace interconnectivity and navigate a more integrated world.

Bio

Fascinated by the limitless domain of AI, Luigi Novellino adopts the title syntographer, a term that resonates deeply within the community. The artist often asks himself: “am I an artist?” Art, in his view, defies rigid definitions or limits; it represents a fluid expression of creativity that transcends labels. The artist’s ultimate goal is to awaken something in the viewer, provoking thoughts and evoking emotions.

Credits

Music: Odyssey by John Tasoulas

Re)Evolution

With the machine programed to draw, the robot becomes a medium for interaction and for “symbiosis” with the artist, creating a kind of “hybrid body” of man and machine, whose nervous system and brain waves administer “software commands” to the robot during the drawing performance. A key actor in the exhibition will be the new model of the KUKA KR 210 robot, that has a multi-functioning performative role: from drawing, experimental dance, music – through the production of industrial sound, and a six channel video projection that documents Ilić’s projects.

بوب ويلسون
鲍伯·威尔逊
בוב וילסון
ロバート·ウィルソン
밥 윌슨
Боб Уилсон
SHAKESPEAR`S SONETTES
Staging Shakespeare, not dramatic but lyrical: that was the intention of the American director Bob Wilson in Sonnets de Shakespeares (Sonnets de Shakespeare), a show on display at the Berliner Ensemble. To that end, Wilson is associated with American-Canadian composer and musician Rufus Wainwright. The result is a variety night, with reference to all genres of entertainment, from the commedia dell’arte to television sketches, passing through the cabaret. If in the Elizabethan era female roles were played by men, Bob Wilson did the same, creating this reverse practice: actresses play male roles. This inversion – Queen Elizabeth 1st, on her throne, declaiming a sonnet with a deep voice and Shakespeare himself, as a young man and an elder, in female voices – further intensifies the farcical tone of the show. So much so that even the sporadic number of transvestite actor Georgette Dee, microphone in hand, does not disagree much of the Shakespearean surroundings.

ベルナール・パルメジャーニ
La Creation du Monde
This is a sprawling, ambitious painting in sound modeled on the birth of the universe. Moving from roiling, gaseous clouds of hiss and static through sharp peels of detailed, unrestrained texture, this is acousmatic music at its very finest, literally creating a universe of sound out of thin air.

Lied ballet

“Lied, a word of German origin and gender neutral, which represents classical music sung about strophic poem, and Ballet. Lieder’s romantic themes are transformed into movement, creating choreographic writing that begins with mime and ends with abstraction. In the end, everything comes together in a great chorus challenging genres and categories, fundamentally expressing the artist’s confidence in the dancing body”. Marcia Peltier

Glitch Robot
The Installation consists of several robotic actors. When the actors make contact with their instruments, they produce a sonic impression of an omnipresent texture of modern life: electronic music. The music robots used in this performance consists of recycled and 3D-printed parts such as harddisks, relays, tongues, motors and solenoids. Glitch Robot connects mechanical, visible movements to audible sound by using small sound-producing robots. Thus, the installation highlights the origin of the sound in a way no conventional medium of electronic music production is able to. Typically, electronic music eliminates the haptic aspect of sound-generation, creating a void in understanding of how sound, and thus music, is mechanically created.

Bloom
Requiring no musical or technical ability, the egalitarian and user-friendly Bloom app enabled anyone of any age to create music, simply by touching the screen. Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allowed users to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player took over when Bloom was left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualizations. This version uses mixed reality with HoloLens.

Waldian
Waldian is a standalone, wall hanging sound and light fixture capable of playing a near infinite amount of melodic permutations over a predetermined musical scale, complemented by emerging light patterns from twelve separate LEDs spread across the sculpture. In technical terms, Waldian contains two oscillators, an envelope generator and a voltage controlled amplifier, all controlled by impulses from a network of logic gates akin to those of early computers. These impulses are essentially the nerves in the electronic ecosystem, deciding over pitch and amplitude changes as well as creating bursts of light to highlight the entrances of each note. Finally, there is a tube overdrive stage that creates harmonic and subharmonics based on how far away the two oscillators are from each other in frequency. Most parameters are customizable, such as the aforementioned pitch, amplitude and overdrive, but the responsiveness and envelope of the light bursts can also be adjusted, directly affecting the appearance of the light patterns.

Tenori-On
Media artist Toshio Iwai and and Yu Nishibori of the Music and Human Interface Group, Yamaha Center for Advanced Sound Technology, have collaborated to design a new digital musical instrument for the 21st+century, TENORI-ON. A 16×16 matrix of LED switches allows everyone to play music intuitively, creating a “visible music” interface. It consists of a hand-held screen with a grid of LED switches, any of which can be activated in a number of ways to create an evolving musical soundscape. The LED switches are held within a magnesium frame, which has two built-in speakers located on the top of frame, as well as a dial and buttons that control the type of sound and beats per minute produced.

Ad lib
The sound sculpture Ad lib. combines a medical machine for automatic pulmonary ventilation with a few organ pipes that play a musical chord to the constant rhythm of the mechanical breath, creating an artificial organ that is metaphorically a mechanical requiem that sounds incessantly. The title of the work Ad lib., an abbreviation of the Latin expression “ad libitum”, is a musical caption that gives the performer discretion of interpretation, allowing for instance to repeat “at will” certain bars of the score. The sculpture aims to refer to the situation in which people, who suffer from critical health conditions, see their survival tied to a breathing machine and, therefore, to the discretion of those who are taking care of them.

HARA
Guillaume marmin and Frédéric marolleau convey spiritual essence through visual abstraction in ‘hara’, an audio-visual collaboration for the 7th chromatic festival in montréal, québec. ‘Hara’, the anatomical home of energy according to japanese custom, is explored by various means. Music and light move through states of tension and calm, creating for each visitor a unique contemplative experience.

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.

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.

White Circle
»White Circle« consists of fluorescent tubes that respond to musical impulses and illuminate the room. Five dedicated compositions by alva noto, byetone, frank bretschneider, and kangding ray playing in a continuous loop (one set takes ca. 45 minutes) model the interrelation between sound, light, and architecture in different ways. Each piece represents an independent and self-contained conceptual proposal by the respective composer. All tracks are multichannel compositions based on the idea of creating a vivid immediate experience of auditory space and visual stimuli. With acoustic material routed to twentyseven speakers placed throughout the gallery, sound itself takes on a threedimensional and indeed sculptural quality.

スティーヴ・ライヒ
סטיב רייך
스티브 라이히
СТИВ РАЙХ
Pendulum Music

Reich came up with the concept while working at the University of Colorado. He was swinging a live microphone in the style of the cowboy’s lasso, and noting the produced feedback, he composed for an “orchestra” of microphones.Three or more microphones are suspended above the speakers by means of a cable and stand. The microphones are pulled back, switched on, and released over the speaker, and gravity causes them to swing back and forth as pendulums. As the microphone nears the speaker, a feedback tone is created. Different lengths of cable will swing at different speeds, creating an overlapping series of feedback squeals. The music created is thus the result of the process of the swinging microphones.

Мути Рэндольф
මුටි රැන්ඩොල්ෆ්
মুটি র‌্যান্ডল্ফ
Generative Installation
Muti Randolph lives in Rio de Janeiro and studied Visual Communications and Industrial Design at the Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. One of the pioneers in computer art in Brazil, he has been shifting from virtual 3d to real 3d spaces creating sets, installations and interior architecture projects. In his work he explores the relation of time and space through music and interactive generative video using custom designed software and hardware. His projects are present in the most relevant art, design and architecture publications.

АЙРИС ВАН ЭРПЕН
イリス ヴァン ヘルペン
FALL 2017
AERIFORM
‘Aeriform’ examines the nature and anatomy of air and the idea of airborne materiality and lightness, creating negative and positive space with shadow and light. Van Herpen also drew inspiration from the Danish underwater artists Between Music who challenge the relationship between the body and its elemental surround, in a subaquatic environment where air is absent.

nhow hotel berlin
Extreme cantilever alert! A four-storey block with a mirrored underside juts out from the top of a Berlin hotel, 25 metres above the ground (photos by Roland Halbe). The huge cantilever comprises the upper floors of the eleven-storey NHow Hotel, which was designed by German architects NPS Tchoban Voss. The end of the cantilever is fully glazed whilst the underside is clad in polished aluminium, creating a mirror that reflects the hotel roof below. Part of the NHow chain, the 310-room hotel contains music facilities that include a ballroom and a sound studio.

rain (full)
rosas and ictus
music: steve reich
The 70-minute piece is a response to Steve Reich’s minimalist composition Music for 18 Musicians, played live here by the Ictus Ensemble. As De Keersmaeker has demonstrated in works such as Fase and Drumming, she’s fascinated by the architecture of Reich’s compositions and the challenge of creating movement that reflects it. more..

Walden Note Money
The project imagines a payment system that challenges the established monetary function of ‘a store of value.’ Creating a new method of exchange that encourages people to actively destroy their money during a transaction. The process positively reinforces this behaviour through the creation of music, produced from the burning money within the transaction machine.

Il n’est pas encore minuit..
Experience this quintessentially French circus spectacle of 17 nimble young performers creating a 360 degree alternative universe of acrobatics, dance, music and human pyramids. With a mass of finely honed, agile bodies, they surge, they merge, and they whip up a physical frenzy to form a breathtaking journey through the air and on the ground.

From design to fabrication, creating modern style is the essence of Asher Levine. In the studio, Asher invents new fabrication techniques that enhance the industry’s understanding of fashion, which has gained a cult following amongst musicians, celebrities, and innovators.more…

조용한 앙상블
Quintetto
Quintetto is an installation based on the study of casual movement of objects or living creatures used as input for the production of sounds. The basic concept is to reveal what we call “invisible concerts” of everyday life. The vertical movements of the 5 fishes in the aquarius is captured by a videocamera, that translates (through a computer software) their movements in digital sound signals. We’ll have 5 different musical instruments creating a totally unexpected live concert.

disc.o
File Festival

disc.o is a multiplayer music instrument with eight CD player and corresponding speakers
arranged in a circular spatial installation. Sequentially switched Light spots in combination with
graphical cutouts in the CDs are creating noise patterns based on the principle of optical sound.

Silent Percussion
File Festival
The “Silent Percussion Project” (SPP) consists in building a set of computer musical instruments that use human gestures to control sounds, composing and performing with them in an attempt to re-incorporate the body in music performance practice. The “SPP” is a response to the question: what kinds of musical instruments does live computer music performance need? To answer this question it researches the aesthetic qualities and language of non-live electronic music, action-perception systems and new media theory to experiment new ways of bridging between gesture and sound. In that sense, the “SPP” looks to address the problem of sound control by introducing new sensing techniques that take advantage of our sensorimotor capabilities. The Silent Drum and MANO instruments analyze shapes made by hands and transform them into multiple streams of continuous data. These streams, or variables, are directly applied to sound control, avoiding the key paradigm. Continuous data is analyzed to extract discrete features of the signals. The variables resulting from analysis are interdependent, that is, changes in one result in changes in the others, creating complex systems that the performer learns by experimentation.

振り子の合唱団
CYCLOID-E

This piece, which comprises a series of tubular pieces arranged horizontally and activated by a motor, generates a particular sound through its movement, which is unexpectedly harmonic. The artists have taken their interest in the mechanisms that generate wave motions as a starting point to create this sculpture: five metal tubes joined together feature sound sources and sensors that allow them to emit different sounds based on their rotations.
The sculpture runs through a series of rhythmic movements, like a dance, creating, in the words of the artists themselves, “a unique kinetic and polyphonic work, in the likeness of the “Cosmic Ballet” to which the physicist Johannes Kepler refers to in his “Music of the Spheres” in 1619.” This work is part of the reflection on the possible interactions between sound and movement developed by the artists since 1999, using electronic devices and inspired by the aesthetics of industrial machinery.

מרדיית המונק
Мередит Монк
ميريديث مونك
16mm Earrings
Meredith Monk’s groundbreaking performance work, 16 Millimeter Earrings, was a seamless integration of live performance, objects, film, vocal and instrumental music, movement, text, recorded sound, and light. It marked several, notable “firsts” for Monk: thinking of sound as an overall environment, working with her voice and visual images as primary elements, creating a full sound score, and incorporating film into a live work. The piece was a breakthrough in her quest to discover a visual/sonic/poetic performance form that could weave together multiple modes of perception. Responding to the original performances in 1966, art critic John Perrault wrote in the Village Voice, “Images, movement, film, words and sounds in Miss Monk’s new work are so skillfully interwoven and inter-related that no description can substitute for the kind of magic that she has managed to produce. The whole stage is her canvas and she uses every bit of it. 16 Millimeter Earrings has to do with surfaces, all seen as if through glass or reflected in a mirror. The surface of the human body. The surface of the erotic and the emotional. The radical juxtaposition of apparently contradictory surfaces- film, flesh, colors, and sound- becomes a witty method of deliberation and deliverance, and of complete art.”
video

Ian Charnas

In the performance Tesla coils generate a massive voltage, creating lightning directed by a pre-composed musical score. Charnas stands between the coils, protected by his chain-mail suit, which conducts the electricity to the ground without electrocuting him. “Each lightning bolt could kill me,” he told me, “but thanks to the Faraday effect I’m shielded in a full body metal suit and my little body stays at zero volts potential.”

Crystal Aqua Trees
Installed in Sony Square in Tokyo and on display until January 14, the ‘Crystal Aqua Trees’ is a crystal work of art inspired by the concept of a fountain that can be seen as a spray of water as well as a Christmas tree. Designed by Torafu Architects, the project was inspired by the Trevi fountain in Rome, the “Ai no Izumi” (Fountain of Love) charity drive, which has been held by Sony every year since 1968. For this edition, the architects proposed a new embodiment as an interactive installation. More images and architects’ description after the break.In response to changes in the landscape of the street and the actions of people, the illumination will play beautiful music in harmony with a gorgeous light display. The movement of people is picked up by a sensor camera, which prompts the pillars of light illuminated by LEDs to change colors to create a glimmering structure.Whenever coins are deposited in the crystal donation box placed in front of the square, the installation responds by switching to a special performance, as if acknowledging the contributions made. Like water in a fountain, the polished black floor surface of the stage reflects the illumination, creating a wonderful scene in the middle of the streets of Ginza.

The Splits (Rehearsal)

The Splits begins with the bisecting of various string instruments into two halves, cutting them along their length, creating two separate instruments. The two halves must then be played together to complete a tune and are, thus, for duets (or quartets, octets or dectets) only—pieces which she is creating in collaboration with musicians and composers. The act of splitting at once destroys the integrity of the instrument as an object, and disrupts the conventional process of aesthetic creation that the instrument traditionally permits. Splitting is not merely an act of destruction, however. Instead, it opens graceful passages for imagined evolution: the split instrument becomes a newly creative instrument, permitting the creation not only of new music, but new communities (visual artist, the composer, the musicians, and the audience). Ms. Benson has “split” two violins, a viola, cello and double bass: all, cheap, mass-produced string instruments made in China.