A Symphony of Noise
Created by Michaela Pnacekova, Jamie Balliu
Herbert’s everyday sound sources are the inspiration for A Symphony of Noise VR. This interactive virtual reality experience is a journey through four sonic landscapes. The first centers on breathing, which immediately makes you focus on listening to the world differently. This is followed by an arctic environment full of scraping and crunching sounds, and finally a shop interior. Using the controllers or by blowing or singing, you can add sounds to the audio palette, which is visualized as waves and colors in three-dimensional space. In the fourth and final landscape, all the sounds are combined in an ultimate symphony.

La trahison des tapis
The title is a reference to the famous work by René Magritte “The Treachery of Images”. Even though the video installation alludes to it, the viewer is immediately aware that this is not a real carpet. What you see is an animation, a digital carpet, its contemporary variant. However, the patterns of the replica show that it could have been made in the west of Iran. The movements, which appear surreal, are reminiscent of a state of intoxication. Whether this was triggered by drugs, or only arose from the lively imagination of a tired child, is left to the speculation of the viewer. The work reflects the importance of traditional arts and crafts in the modern digital world. It is the first of a series of digital carpets.
The animation has a realistic resolution of 4k, is 03:55 minutes, and runs in an infinite loop on a 65-inch display.

Morphogenetic Creations
Created by a mathematician, digital artist and Emmy award winning supervisor of computer generated effects – Andy Lomas, Morphogenetic Creations is a collection of works that explore the nature of complex forms that can be produced by digital simulation of growth systems. These pieces start with a simple initial form which is incrementally developed over time by adding iterative layers of complexity to the structure.The aim is to create structures emergently: exploring generic similarities between many different forms in nature rather than recreating any particular organism. In the process he is exploring universal archetypal forms that can come from growth processes rather than top-down externally engineered design.Programmed using C++ with CUDA, the series use a system of growth by deposition: small particles of matter are repeatedly deposited onto a growing structure to build incrementally over time. Rules are used to determine how new particles are created, and how they move before being deposited. Small changes to these rules can have dramatic effects on the final structure, in effect changing the environment in which the form is grown. To create these works, Andy uses the GPU as a compute device rather than as a display device. All the data is held in memory on the GPU and various kernel functions are called to do things like apply forces to the cells, make cells split, and to render the cells using ray-tracing. The simulations and rendering for each of the different animated structures within this piece take about 12 hours to run, Andy explains. By the end of the simulations there are over 50,000,000 cells in each structure.The Cellular Forms use a more biological model, representing a simplified system of cellular growth. Structures are created out of interconnected cells, with rules for the forces between cells, as well as rules for how cells accumulate internal nutrients. When the nutrient level in a cell exceeds a given threshold the cell splits into two, with both the parent and daughter cells reconnecting to their immediate neighbours. Many different complex organic structures are seen to arise from subtle variations on these rules, creating forms with strong reminiscences of plants, corals, internal organs and micro-organisms.

Contours
Contours proposes a distancing through de-familiarization of what has become concrete by way of image and language. Active contradiction and abstraction are central to the works through a mixture of variables often seen in opposition or as dis-harmonious. Through the presentation of puzzling symbols, both familiar and skewed, a legible illegibility is produced: information being transmitted, but the immediate read obscured and hidden from sight. Through this, current sight-lines are made visible allowing for critical reflection, while simultaneously revealing the flexibility of language and image in order to engender the possibility of alternative understandings of the world: a crucial consideration in context of our contemporary global social and political shifts.
video

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.

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.

Рафаэль Лозано-Хеммер
拉斐尔·洛萨诺 – 亨默
ラファエル·ロサノ=ヘメル
라파엘 로자노
רפאל לוזאנו, המר
Pulse Room

Pulse Room is an interactive installation featuring one to three hundred clear incandescent light bulbs, 300 W each and hung from a cable at a height of three metres. The bulbs are uniformly distributed over the exhibition room, filling it completely. An interface placed on a side of the room has a sensor that detects the heart rate of participants. When someone holds the interface, a computer detects his or her pulse and immediately sets off the closest bulb to flash at the exact rhythm of his or her heart. The moment the interface is released all the lights turn off briefly and the flashing sequence advances by one position down the queue, to the next bulb in the grid. Each time someone touches the interface a heart pattern is recorded and this is sent to the first bulb in the grid, pushing ahead all the existing recordings. At any given time the installation shows the recordings from the most recent participants.

the girl in the wood frock
This project is based on a fairy tale in which a girl’s life is changed by what she wears. It is through clothing that the heroine experiences the outside world and the wood dress is both armor and prison for the girl, allowing her to escape the threat of incest while also disguising her true self from the prince.
Each dress in the series is an exercise in controlling one’s most immediate environment and how one navigates such an intimate spatial situation, using covers to filter what we feel by either exaggerating or muting sensation. They are also explorations of material technique and are made using a combination of high and low-tech methods and industrial materials such as printing press felt, rubber, and copper cable. The dresses are built rather than sewn and architectural construction informs their detailing.

Flowing water, Standing time
Montreal-based fashion designer, ying gao, designed robotic clothing out of silicone, glass and organza, and added electronic devices to create every-changing dynamic pieces that react to its surrounding chromatic spectrum. the collection, entitled ‘flowing water, standing time’ captures the essence of movement and stability over a period of time, and how different energies flowing through the garment, mirroring the colors in its immediate surroundings.

felt-dress

Felt Dress is the third dress from The Girl in the Wood Frock series, based on a fairy tale in which a girl runs away wearing a set of dresses that save her life. Each dress is an exercise in controlling one’s most immediate environment. They are also explorations of material technique and are made through a combination of high and low-tech methods, with architectural construction informing their detailing.

KuBe
Designed by dutch studio MVRDV and danish firm ADEPT, the 3,200 square meter ‘house of culture in movement’ was completed for the municipality of frederiksberg as a focal point for both the immediate community, and also the wider area of copenhagen. The architects claim that the project is a new typology, blending theater, sport, and learning programs within a space that promotes an active lifestyle, regardless of age, ability or interest.

Foldout Couch
This design proposes incongruous relationships between materiality, technique, scale, and form in order to delay a clear perception of the 1:1 construction. By pairing the formal techniques of curved folding with rigid sheet stock, finished metal with pleather fabric, and domestic upholstery details with CNC machined parts, the construction references things and spaces beyond its immediate setting.

The almost ideal game

Gilles Deleuze about the Ideal Game: we are surprised when he postulates as the first rule: “there is no rule”. Soon, all the other games that have some rule are, for him, partial. That is, products of the ideal game.

A game where there are no rules implies a completely free game creatively. The question to be raised is whether there is a grey region between the ideal game and the partial games, so that the rules established in the partial games could be suspended. This way we could unpartialise the games bringing them closer to the ideal game or some kind of almost ideal game.
If we take the rules of any game, it means it stops to work immediately, except in the ideal game. Therefore, the key question is: how to suspend the rule of a game (Dice games) so that it can continue to work?

FILE FESTIVAL SAO PAULO 2016

flicker

Flicker is an immersive electronic environment of generative image and sound. A collaborative work with Oliver Bown. Based on biological models of firefly behaviour, Flicker generates an ever shifting rhythmic, meditative environment to the viewer. Flicker uses 4 channels of synchronised high definition video and 8 channels of sound to immerse the viewer in a phenomenologically rich environment of artificial life. The work is a large-scale agent-based simulation, with each agent providing a rhythmic pulse at regular intervals. Agents try to synchronise their pulse with other agents in their immediate neighbourhood. The collective pulsations of groups of local agents are spatially sonified with int exhibition space. Over time, large groups synchronise at different rates, leading to complex visual and aural structures, syncopating and constant shifting in to a long term complexity.

Monkey Business
file festival

A cuddly toy monkey, hanging on a wall like a Jumping Jack. With a friendly hello the puppet starts to react to the visitor’s movements and immediately apes every gesture with its arms and legs, its head and body. You can let the ape act smoothly or invite him to a wild dace.
But in a subtle way the monkey asks for another move you have never ever performed before. Playing the game you will lose control unconsciously and after the seductive encounter you might start wondering: What is all this monkey business about? Who pulls the strings?

bio intelligence quotient house
Dubbed the Bio Intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House, the approximately €5 million building was designed by Splitterwerk Architects and funded by the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA), a long-running exhibition series showcasing cutting edge techniques and architectural concepts, for this year’s International Building Exhibition – 2013.
A total of 129 algae culturing tanks are affixed to the East and West sides of the building via an automated external scaffolding structure that constantly turns the tanks towards the sun. The plant cultures are fed through an integrated tubing system, CO2 is pumped in as well. According to Arup’s Europe Research Leader, Jan Wurm, who collaborated with Splitterwerk on the project:The algae flourish and multiply in a regular cycle until they can be harvested. They are then separated from the rest of the algae and transferred as a thick pulp to the technical room of the BIQ. The little plants are then fermented in an external biogas plant, so that they can be used again to generate biogas. Algae are particularly well suited for this, as they produce up to five times as much biomass per hectare as terrestrial plants and contain many oils that can be used for energy.Not only do these tanks provide shade for every level of the building during the summer and biogas for heating during the winter, the facade itself collects excess heat not being used by the algae, like a solar thermal system. That heat can then either be used immediately or stored in 80-meter-deep, borine-filled borehole heat exchangers located under the structure. Total fossil fuels used in this process: zero.

MERCEDES-BENZ “Invisible Drive”
The Mercedes-Benz F-CELL is the first hydrogen-powered car, which is ready for series production. With a spectacular action we draw a suitable attention to this innovation: We made people experience F-CELL the same way the environment does – like it’s not even existent. In practice: We disguised the B-Class F-CELL with mats out of LEDs on the one side and fixed a camera on the other side of the car. The camera filmed everything that happened behind the vehicle and transferred every action directly to the LED mats. The effect: The B-Class fused completely with its surrounding and became invisible for the passersby in the immediate vicinity.