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.

Tribe City
Hundreds of beings and dreamlike and dystopian elements inhabit the digital and autonomous works that are part of this project. “It’s a portrait of the masses,” summarise the artists, whose fascination with group dynamics, technological phenomena and the ego are expressed in Tribe with an eclectic selection of individuals who bring to life deeply recognisable social attitudes. Collective behaviour and manipulation are recurring themes in SMACK’s work, which often uses popular visual references and light-hearted aesthetics to present us with an uncomfortable reflection of who we are.

super consumers floral

Superconsumers is a response to the luxury consumer products on sale within the department store. Universal Everything created a series of extreme digital-pop-art amplifications of these products, bringing them to life as a diverse, animated parade of characters – from metallic puffer jackets to elaborate jewellery, gastronomical creations to bold floral arrangements.

Networked Ecosystem
In Networked Ecosystem, natural phenomena have been replaced by digital and artificial systems as forces that drive development: Electricity/battery = sustenance, WIFI signals = nutrition, Lidar data = fire/heat. Data Organisms populate this digital ecosystem as native life forms in the form of bots, AI’s, and avatars. Visitors to this networked landscape develop new kinds of digital senses to experience data as environmental changes, and interact with the simulated world and each other in an ever-changing online environment.

Cory Arcangel es un joven artista multimedia norteamericano con sede en NY. Él crea sus obras a través de la pintura, la música, el vídeo y la transformación de videojuegos. Arcangel a menudo utiliza la estrategia de apropiación artística creativa, re-utilizando materiales existentes, para crear nuevas obras de arte. Su obra explora la relación entre la tecnología digital y la cultura pop.

PARADISE – A contemporary interpretation of The Garden of Earthly Delights

Lo Studio Smack, meglio conosciuto per il video musicale Witch Doctor di De Staat, ha rilasciato una nuova animazione: un’interpretazione contemporanea di uno dei dipinti più famosi del primo maestro olandese Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Nel loro ultimo lavoro, il gruppo ha ripulito il paesaggio originale del pannello centrale del dipinto di Bosch e lo ha ricostruito in un’allucinante animazione 4K. Le creature che popolano questo parco giochi al coperto incarnano gli eccessi e i desideri della civiltà occidentale del XXI secolo. Consumismo, egoismo, evasione, richiamo dell’erotismo, vanità e decadenza. Tutti i personaggi sono metafore per la nostra società in cui i solitari sciamano nel loro mondo dei sogni digitale. Sono riflessi simbolici dell’ego e dell’immaginazione delle persone come si vedono, a differenza della versione di Bosch, in cui tutti gli individui sembrano più o meno uguali. Da un Hello Kitty arrapato a un serpente del pene che caccia alla coca Da uno spybot incarnato a polli fritti senza testa. Questi personaggi, una volta figure di sogno dipinte con precisione, sono ora modelli 3D creati digitalmente. A tutti loro è stato dato il proprio ciclo di animazione per vagare nel paesaggio. Inserendoli tutti insieme in questo affresco sintetico, il quadro non è mai lo stesso. Ciò che l’animazione e il trittico di Bosch hanno in comune è che difficilmente riuscirai a sopportare tutto, puoi guardarlo per ore. “Paradise” è stato commissionato dal Museo MOTI nei Paesi Bassi per la mostra New Delights, che fa parte del 500 ° anniversario di Hieronymus Bosch. Una gigantesca installazione video di quest’opera è esposta nel Museo fino al 31 dicembre 2016.

Super Konsumenten Blumen
Superconsumers ist eine Antwort auf die Luxus-Konsumgüter, die im Kaufhaus angeboten werden. Universal Everything schuf eine Reihe extremer Digital-Pop-Art-Verstärkungen dieser Produkte, die sie als vielfältige, animierte Parade von Charakteren zum Leben erweckten – von metallischen Pufferjacken über aufwändigen Schmuck, gastronomische Kreationen bis hin zu kühnen Blumenarrangements.

Cyberia

Performance & live computer generated simulation

A postmodern fairytale, Cyberia takes place somewhere in a cold distant East, stretching between and endless imaginary realm and a vast physical space. It is a westwards journey towards a promised future with no arrival and no return. There is no here or there, only a twilight zone between a departure point and a simulated destination. Between digital video projections and a physical setting, using the mechanics of a video-game engine with a motion capture suit, Cyberia is the simulation of an endless pre-climax state where a performer and a CG avatar dance as one to the rhythms of an imaginary West. In a world oversaturated by digital data –mysticism and paranormal are as popular as ever. Emerging technologies are increasingly incorporated in a form of postmodern spiritualism, as Arthur C. Clarke points out: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Ghost City
The installation Ghost City is built around a reinterpretation of the set of the famous game GTA V. The spectator is plunged into an environment without any population that disappears as we move closer. It is a meditative and captivating experience. The focus is put on architectural and graphic elements. This virtual universe solicits both the present (the experience of the artwork) and the memory. The disappearance, before our eyes, of this virtual universe feeds the terror that one day all our digital life – ephemeral cloud.

SCHRÖDINGER’S BABY
Schrödinger’s Baby(2019/20), TZUSOO alludes to the popular thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Schrödinger proposed a scenario in which a cat is locked in a box with an unstable radioactive atom that could potentially begin to emit radiation and release a toxic gas. However, there is no way to say with certainty when or indeed whether this will happen without opening the box. The result is a paradox, with Schrödinger asserting that the cat enters a state of superposition that makes it impossible to say whether it is alive or dead.The South Korean artist translates this famous paradox into the reality of her own life, creating a digital baby in virtual space. Based on her inner grappling with potential motherhood, TZUSOO bought the digital model of a developing embryo, refining it according to her own ideas. She is free to determine the sex, skin colour and other characteristics or to dispense with all specifications so as to avoid stereotyping. In Schrödinger’s Baby, TZUSOO thus discuss core aspects of her work including reflection on gender and origin for which she also draws on her personal experience as a South Korean artist in Europe.

SVNSCRNS
SVNSCRNS is a commissioning project that is initiated by Klankvorm after a concept by Joris Strijbos. The project consists of the realization of a kinetic audiovisual installation for which artists are invited to realize content. The installation can be used for live performances as well as for playing prearranged compositions. The installation consists of seven rotating projection screens and speakers that can be controlled from a central point. Custom build software and hardware are accessible for artists from different backgrounds to experiment with this new dynamic field for audiovisual composition. Light, sound and movement come together with different forms of digital media to create a multi sensorial experience for the audience. In this way the project functions as a platform in which makers and creators of all kinds can collaboratively explore this kinetic audiovisual medium. The result is a slow moving robotic structure which can display different sorts of media but in it’s presence will have a strong influence on the experience of the spectator.

Glitch art’ is a new genre which is now growing very popular within the digital art age. A glitch is certainly what many of us has experienced at least once in their life you are surrounded by technology. It is a temporary fault in the system and produces a distorted image. According to Iman Moradi, who wrote a brief account on glitch art, defined that there are two types of glitch art. One being ‘Pure Glitch’ where it was produced at random, real, and appropriated. Where as Szauder’s work classifies into ‘Glitch-alike’ because of the deliberate nature where the works were planned and designed, making them artificial.

ФЛОРА БОРСИ
asphyxia
Flora Borsi is a popular digital artist from Budapest, Hungary. Her works is to visualize the physically impossible in a form of photo manipulation. These pictures are crafted with great balance of emotions, dreams and humor.

Homage to B. Franklin
File Festival
Homage to B. Franklin is an interactive sound installation. Like Franklin, we also got inspired by the glass harps, so popular in the eighteenth century and still enjoyed nowadays. With this reference in mind, we aim to realize a dialogue between the past and the approach to explore sonority from elements of everyday life -like simple crystal glasses filled with water- and the present, in which we use electronic synthesizers and tangible digital interfaces to generate music. In both cases, there is something magical about being able to generate music without necessarily being an instrumentalist, without making use of classical or conventional instruments. In both, the resulting sound is different from what these instruments can generate, but still music. Participation from the audience is essential for this work to make sense. This is not an artwork of mere contemplative character. We are interested in motivating the participation and the dialogue work-individual and between individuals, since this is a project in which one can interact in groups.