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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.