The Sea

FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival

The Sea is an extraction of a complex natural phenomenon, resulting in an artificial emulation that develops a life form of its own. Just like the sea with its endless waves, this artificial system follows the impact of an immersive state, leading to a unique vision of an artificial generator. Despite appearing chaotic, it is capable of generating associations ranging from the movement of waves to science fiction scenarios.

Bio

Paul Gründorfer develops process-related systems and explores variable or unstable conditions in the occurrence of sound when exposed to amplification, feedback, and multiple signal streams. His works focus on processes that evolve in a social space. Leo Peschta is an artist and researcher. During his studies, he worked in various fields of media arts, including sound, installations and software, developing over the years a special interest in robotics and machinery.

Credits

Austrian Embassy

CAPACITIVE BODY
file festival

The installation “capacitive body” is a modular light system that reacts to the sound of its environment. Each custom-built module consists of an electro-luminescent light wire linked to a piezoelectric sensor and a microcontroller. Through its modular setup it can easily be adapted to various urban spaces. The sensors are used to measure vibrations of architectural solids in a range of low frequencies. These oscillations are triggered by surrounding ambient noise, for example traffic noise. The data sensor controls the light wires, which are tensed to a spatial net structure. According to the values of the measurement, light flashes are generated. With increasing vibrations the time between flashes becomes shorter and shorter. The stability of this nervous system gets to an end where it collapses and restarts again. A dynamic light space is thereby created, which creates a visual feedback of the aural activity around the installation.

泰里·卡拉汉
טיירי קלהאן
タイリーキャラハン
Тайри Каллахан
Chromatic Typewriter
The little Chromatic Typewriter, a conceptual art piece, is out in the world and the feedback has been great. Although it does not paint, I’ve decided I can at least re-type my artist statement with the thing, so long as I can limit it to a paragraph. It ought to be equally decipherable as any other artist statement I’ve read lately.
I’m super excited about it. The reaction to the piece has been pretty special. It seems to be making a lot of people happy and it has started some great discussions on the translation of art into words and words into art.

Colourfield
Colourfield is an evolutionary ecosystem of colour. Colour agents try to exist in a simple universe by producing colours that are suited to their environment. This environment is determined by the other agents and the colours they produce. Entering into complex feedback cycles, Colourfield presents an evolving palette of shifting colours. Different configurations emerge based on the strategies the ecosystem discovers for co-existance and co-dependency. Harmonious configurations often remain stable for a short while, before eventually being replaced by new relations, better able to survive in the ever shifting environment.

The Heart Chamber Orchestra
File Festival – Hipersonica 

In the TERMINALBEACH Heart Chamber Orchestra (made up of artists Erich Berger and Peter Vatava), twelve musicians played pieces from the heartbeat, recorded by an electrocardiogram from data sent by sensors placed on their bodies. As the live score created in real time from the physical and emotional states of the musicians, their beats further influenced the resulting musical composition. In this way, the biological feedback loop becomes a self-generating, organic and evolving system, which creates a musical score and a show that adopts the form of open or network art, in which chance and interdependence, thus how emotional changes and computational reasoning create a biological and psychological dynamic at the same time.

Skin-awareness
The immersive space morphs and alters with light and becomes solid, its pressure composing and decomposing the self-awareness of skin. The dancer’s body is extended and manipulated as a conscious entity, exceeding the physiological object. The constant feedback between the body’s trajectory and interaction with the environment changes the nature of the object itself.

Contornos
O laboratório criativo baseado em Londres Bare Conductive foi convidado a se juntar aos designers Fabio Antinori e Alicja Pytlewska para desenvolver uma metáfora em grande escala para a ideia de dar vida a uma coleção de peles têxteis responsivas. ‘Contours’ está no centro da instalação de tapeçaria interativa; uma série de sensores capacitivos são aplicados aos substratos de tecido suspensos usando tinta condutora. Esses sensores reagem à presença de uma pessoa nas proximidades e rastreiam seus movimentos, emitindo uma paisagem sonora ambiente constantemente modulada que lembra os ambientes de pesquisa médica. A ornamentação geométrica abstrata conecta os sensores individuais das tapeçarias para formar painéis gigantes, servindo como um loop de feedback acústico que alude à relação entre a ciência e o corpo.

Bilateral Feedback
Performed Sep. 27-28th 2019 @Platform-L, Seoul, Korea

ROTOЯ
The Rotor is equipped with a four channel speakersystem and a 360° camera. The artists control the speed of it’s rotation which directly influences the projected video-images as well as the sound-characteristics and the perception of the object itself. Acceleration & deceleration become main parameters, which enables the artists to compose an otherworldly piece that seems to follow it’s own logic. A strange communication between audio, video, object and light establishes itself and seduces the audience. There is the hypnotic movement of the sculpture while inevitable auditory and visual feedback is used as a central aesthetic element: The rotating speakers are amplified by static microphones, provoking complex feedback loops and patterns, that trigger psychoacoustic sensations.

Céu de aço
A topografia íntima do cérebro é disposta em uma grade de 80 placas de teto de aço. O visitante pode experimentar a dinâmica de seu eu cognitivo usando uma interface de EEG, que permite que ele caminhe sob a representação acústica de suas próprias ondas cerebrais. As ressonâncias acumuladas de chapas de aço geram tons penetrantes. A distribuição espacial do impacto e a sobreposição de reverberações criam um espaço sonoro físico para abrigar um fluxo intangível de consciência. ‘Staalhemel’ (‘céu de aço’, 2009) articula a relação contraditória que mantemos com nosso próprio sistema nervoso. O feedback neurológico faz com que o foco cognitivo seja repetidamente interrompido pela representação deste foco. O pensamento concentrado tenta se retratar em um espaço que é remodelado pensando-se quase a cada fração de segundo.

Somaphonie
Somaphonie est composé d’objets électroniques autogènes qui répondent aux stimuli et aux contrôleurs portables de biofeedback. Comme il est lié au pouls cardiaque, à la tension musculaire et au mouvement des interprètes, la composition visuelle audiovisuelle en temps réel est possible. L’artiste explore l’interdépendance entre les équipements numériques et les interprètes qui expriment le comportement et la relation cybernétique (cerveau artificiel) à travers ce projet.

10VE: Sequenz für zwei
10ve: sequenz für zwei ist ein duet für zwei verstärkte körper, die mit drahtlosen biofeedback – und bewegungsgeräten ausgestattet sind. die synchronisierungen und korrelationen der signale erzeugen eine musikalische darstellung der auftretenden prozesse zwischen ihren körpern.

Somaphony

<somaphony> is composed of autogenous electronic objects that respond to stimuli and biofeedback wearable controllers. As it is connected with heart pulse, muscle tense, and movement of performers, real-time audiovisual visual composition is possible. The artist explores interdependence between digital equipment and performers that express behavior and cybernetic(artificial brain) relationship through this project.

Dravb
dravb consists of an 8×8 LED matrix and two proximity sensors. It uses two ESP8266 microcontrollers as ADCs to map hand movement to the matrix, but could also be used for musical purposes. I wanted it to have the look and feel of an old analog computer, with a clunky interface and dubious visual feedback.

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.

Jonattas Poltronieri, Luis Mello, Pedro Venetucci & Rofli Sanches
Phantom Limb

Just like the original box, the installation is a rectangular unit where the user inserts his arm and is urged to move it in different ways. The similarity with the original object disappears as, instead of having a mirror to provide the image that motivates the interaction, there is a screen that mediates the user’s view and the place where his arm actually is. The displayed image of the user’s arm can be reversed, distorted and coloured, among several modifications to simulate in a rich way the strangeness of not having control over a member, and to question whether what is seen is an accurate portrayal of the real body. Although deep and subjective, the topic addressed in this experience is easy and accessible in its interaction, offering various sensory feedbacks to the user. Through it, it is proposed that we experience and reflect upon the disconnection between thought and body, intention and action, sensation and reality.

FILE SAO PAULO 2015

The Other in You
The Other in You, developed as a new way to experience dance, has realized a novel dance audience experience. We assembled the cutting-edge Computer Graphics, haptic feedback device which directly express the dance to the body, 16 stereophony channels sound and research on Virtual Reality techniques to realize this work. How can we relate to others, who are supposed to be distant from us? Do we really know what it is to “see”? The Other in You is an attempt to revive the notion of our body in relation to an object, a notion, which had been forgotten in the act of watching. Virtual reality technology enables us to bring the act of watching, once detached from the body, back to where it belongs. And as a result, it reconstructs the notion of “seeing“.

10VE:SEQUENCE FOR TWO
10VE:SEQUENCE FOR TWO is a duet for two amplified bodies equipped with wireless biofeedback and movement devices, measuring the performers heart-rate, stress-level, breath and movement. The synchronizations and correlations of the signals generate a musical representation of the occurring processes between their bodies.

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.

Staalhemel

The intimate topography of the brain is laid out across a grid of 80 steel ceiling tiles as a spatialized form of tapping. The visitor can experience the dynamics of his cognitive self by fitting a wireless EEG interface on his head, that allows him to walk under the acoustic representation of his own brain waves.The accumulating resonances of impacted steel sheets generates penetrating overtones. The spatial distribution of impact and the overlapping of reverberations create a very physical soundspace to house an intangible stream of consciousness.‘Staalhemel’ (‘steel sky’, 2009) articulates the contradictory relationship we entertain with our own nervous system. Neurological feedback makes that the cognitive focus is repeatedly interrupted by the representation of this focus. Concentrated thinking attempts to portray itself in a space that is reshaped by thinking itself nearly every split second.

On Your Wavelength (Canary Wharf)
“The installation acts a feedback loop. It actively rewards concentration, visitors feel a sense of achievement at casting away their inhibitions and achieving clarity”.
Marcus Lyall

Maurice Benayoun and Tobias Klein
Brain Factory Prototype 2
Brain Factory is an installation that allows the audience to give a shape to human abstractions through Brain-Computer Interaction (BCI), and then to convert the resulting form into a physical object. The work examines the human specificity through abstract constructs such as LOVE, FREEDOM, and DESIRE. The project articulates the relationship between thought and matter, concept and object, humans and machine. Brain Factory uses Electroencephalography (EEG) data captured by BCI. As a brain activity is unique, we developed a novel calibration process of the individual data readings and associated emotional responses within a framework of binary outcomes. This is key for a real-time feedback – a biofeedback – between the virtual generative processes and the brain’s associated response.

Biofeedback Artwork

Amy Karle connects her body and consciousness to technology to create art, repurposing a Sandin Image Processor as an electrophysiological visualization device. While meditating, Amy Karle inputs her biofeedback into the historically significant Sandin IP analog computer to generate the output of image and sound in real-time. The artwork is both the long-duration performance as well as the experimental video art that is created in the process.

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.

Contours
London-based creative laboratory Bare Conductive was invited to team up with designers Fabio Antinori and Alicja Pytlewska in order to develop a large-scale metaphor for the idea of breathing life into a collection of responsive textile skins. ‘Contours’ is at the core of the interactive tapestry installation; a series capacitive sensors are applied to the suspended fabric substrates using conductive paint. These sensors react to the presence of a person within the vicinity and track their movements, outputting a constantly modulated ambient soundscape reminiscent of medical research environments. The abstract geometric ornamentation connects the tapestries’ individual sensors to form giant panels, serving as an acoustic feedback loop that alludes to the relationship between science and the body.

the sound of empty space
The sound of empty space explores relationships between microphones, speakers, and surrounding acoustic environments through controlled, self-generating microphone feedback. Amplifying and aestheticizing the acoustic inactivity between technological “inputs” and “outputs” – stand-ins for their corporeal correlates, the ear and mouth – the notion of a causal sound producing object is challenged, and questions are posed as to the status of the ʻamplifiedʼ. By building flawed technological systems and nullifying their intended potential for communication, the ear is turned towards the empty space between components; to the unique configurations of each amplifying assemblage.

rotary tumble
File Festival
“Rotary Tumble” is an experiment in projection mapping onto a moving tangible object. We start with a freely spinning disc that viewers can touch and spin by hand. With an optical rotary encoder the system detects the exact speed, direction, and position of the spinning disc in real-time. This feedback data is used to drive a physics simulation of tumbling shapes which is then projection mapped back onto the spinning disc itself.

MSHR is a collaborative project by New York-based artists Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo produces sculptural synthesizers, ritualistic installations and performances that use light and audio feedback to generate sensory experiences. MSHR emerged in 2011 from the five-person art collective Oregon Painting Society.

iTypewriter
Gedacht ist der iTypewriter laut Entwickler als Eingabegerät für die älteren Semester, die mit mechanischen Schreibmaschinen vertraut sind, sich aber an Rechner und iPad nicht herantrauen. Auch bringt der iTypewriter das haptische Feedback zurück. Der iTypewriter funktioniert wie eine echte Schreibmaschine, nur treffen die Typen den Touchscreen des iPad statt eines Farbbandes. Die Typenhebel haben deshalb am Ende Gummistücke, die den iPad-Stift ersetzen.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil
In taking on the triptych form, Yoshihide Sodeoka’s “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” finds transcendence in the intense frequency of violet noise. With a title referencing the Three Wise Monkeys 17th century carving over the door of the famous Toshogu shrine in Nikko, Japan, Sodeoka uses the digital video medium — specifically the trope of video feedback and television static bars — to represent a contemporary form of positive mindfulness and action.

サラ·シュナイダー
Сара Шнайдер/
שניידר שרה
사라 슈나이더
سارة شنايدر
Centro de Rehabilitacion en Austria
“The project developes an architecture that uses rules of natural growth and connects both growth and ornament, with a landscape environment, topologically and calligraphically. The ornament creates a symbiotic relationship with the existing environment by framing existing topographic features and at the same time giving a feedback to the landscape by creating topographical irregularities.”

THE MIND CUPOLA
Affective Environment
Brigitta Zics is an artist, interaction designer and media philosopher who investigates the creative and affective potential of emerging technologies to develop new ways of communication between human and machine. Mind Cupola explores the creative potential of eye-movement and applies the philosophical concept of the cognitive-feedback loop to trigger novel aesthetic experiences of the participant.

Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis ist eine Roboter-Skulptur-Installation, die vom Kiasma-Museum in Helsinki, Finnland, im Rahmen von Outoaly, der von Erkki Huhtamo 2000 kuratierten Alien Intelligence Exhibition, in Auftrag gegeben wurde. Sie besteht aus fünfzehn Roboter-Klangskulpturen, die mit der Öffentlichkeit interagieren und ihr Verhalten im Laufe der Zeit ändern . Diese Verhaltensweisen ändern sich aufgrund des Feedbacks von Infrarotsensoren, der Anwesenheit des Teilnehmers / Zuschauers in der Ausstellung und der Kommunikation zwischen den einzelnen Skulpturen. Diese Serie von Roboterskulpturen spricht über ein Computernetzwerk und hörbare Telefontöne miteinander, die eine musikalische Sprache für die Gruppe sind. Die Autopoese ist „selbstgemacht“, ein Merkmal aller lebenden Systeme, das von Francisco Varella und Humberto Maturana definiert und verfeinert wurde. Die Interaktivität bindet den Betrachter / Teilnehmer ein, der wiederum die Entwicklung und Entstehung des Systems beeinflusst. Dies schafft eine Systementwicklung sowie eine Gesamtgruppe skulpturaler Ästhetik. Autopoiesis bricht von Standardschnittstellen (Maus) und Wiedergabemethoden (CRT) ab und bietet eine interaktive Umgebung, die umfassend, detailliert und in Echtzeit entwickelt werden kann, indem Feedback und Interaktion von Zuschauern / Teilnehmern genutzt werden.

UNKNOWN PLANET
The Latvian sound artists collective “Clausthome” (Lauris Vorslavs, Girts Radzins) and video artist Martins Ratniks will present a sound and video modulation performance unclosing saturated sound landscapes and collages of the electromagnetic waves, created by scanning and retranslating a real-time audio and video signal modulations. In their daily practices “Clausthome” collective is engaged in experiments with modulations and sound feedback as well as in collecting diverse radioa signals and scanning of radio frequences. Martins Ratniks is one of most renowned Latvian video artists, whose experiments in the field of art and technologies has been acknowledged both in Latvia and abroad. This will not be the first collaboration between “ Clausthome” and Martins Ratniks, previously they have been working togeher on such projects as “ Spectrosphere” (2006) and “ Unknown Planet” (2012).

The Night is Filled With the Harmonics of Suburban Dreams

The Night is Filled With the Harmonics of Suburban Dreams provides an Indigenous critique of water, energy and sustainability policy discourse. It offers an absurd metaphor that mimics the unbalanced feedback loop generated by markets and consumers locally and globally, where an economy driven by the Judeo Christian Western scientific worldview simultaneously produces scarcities and an industry of “sustainability.”

Elucidating Feedback
File Festival

The more we look, the more we see, the more we see the more we look. “Elucidating feedback” is a brain-controlled installation about the creativity inherent in the act of observation. The more attention that is paid to the installation, the more order is reflected in the video and audio. The idea is that we create the finer details of our experience through the act of being attentive. The more we observe our environment, the more we discover, and the result of this active process is the creation of the rich details of our experience. The project uses neuro feedback supplied through interaction between the user and a BCI (brain-computer interface) device. The mindset (the BCI device) reads your brainwaves and this alters how the installation creates form from static. The more attention is paid, the more pattern is formed; as less attention is paid, the pattern breaks back into static. This is intended to form a feedback loop between the user’s attention and the subject of their attention (the projected patterns). The audio-visual aspect of the installation produces pattern, order and detail in direct proportion to the attention that the user is currently paying. If the user is in a state where the mind is freely wandering and not focused on any one thing, the patterns decay into static, bringing the installation back to a state of stasis.

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.