highlike

ANOUK WIPPRECHT

PANGOLIN DRESS

The Pangolin Scales Project demonstrates a 1.024 channel BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) that is able to extract information from the human brain with an unprecedented resolution. The extracted information is used to control the Pangolin Scale Dress interactively into 64 outputs.The dress is also inspired by the pangolin, cute, harmless animals sometimes known as scaly anteaters. They have large, protective keratin scales covering their skin (they are the only known mammals with this feature) and live in hollow trees or burrows.As such, Pangolins and considered an endangered species and some have theorized that the recent coronavirus may have emerged from the consumption of pangolin meat.Wipprecht’s main challenge in the project’s development was to not overload the dress with additional weight. She teamed up 3D printing experts Shapeways and Igor Knezevic in order to create an ‘exo-skeleton like dress-frame (3mm) that was light enough to be worn but sturdy enough to hold all the mechanics in place

localStyle (Marlena Novak & Jay Alan Yim) in collaboration with Malcolm MacIver

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.

1024 architecture

VORTEX

Architectural fragment made from scaffolding, VORTEX has a raw wood skin highlighted by 12 lines of LED light as many generative and constructive project’s lines. Merging organic materials with new technologies, this hybrid architectural artwork wraps around and embraces the footbridge between the complex’s two buildings, revealing and enhancing the venue’s dynamic energy while working as a live visualizer of energy consumption. VORTEX evolves like a living organism; it breathes, trembles and emits pulses of light created using 1024’s MadMapper software. Manually controlled via a joystick, the structure can be synchronized to music and also displays its location’s energy consumption through a series of illuminated tubes. It ultimately answers to the ambient environment around it, capturing the Darwin Ecosystem Project’s unique energy consumption footprint, and converting it into data that is processed to spawn realtime visuals.
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Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos and realities:united

Contemporary Art Centre in Cordoba
BUILDING FAÇADE WITH AN INTEGRATED LIGHT AND MEDIA INSTALLATION

To transform the façade into a light and media display without fundamentally changing its solid appearance as envisioned by Nieto Sobejano turned out to be the biggest challenge in the project. The façade is accordingly designed to deliver a tactile and solid appearance in the daytime while it turns at night into a unique and dynamic communication wall that reacts very specifically to the architecture. The 100-meter façade consists of 1,319 hexagonal, recessed and pre-fabricated “bowls” on different scales. Each of the bowls serves as a reflector for an integrated artificial light source. The intensity of each lamp can be controlled individually, forming a huge irregular low-resolution grey scale display. The thorough immersion of the “pixel-bowls” – like negative impressions – in the volume of the façade turns the architectural scheme itself into a digital information carrier. During the day, the façade shows a three-dimensional landscape with no sign of being a media facade. Additionally, this tectonically modulated surface topography is characterized by a playful composition of light and shadow that constantly changes with the movement of the sun.

Soichiro Mihara

三原 聡一郎
The Blank to Overcome
file festival
Part of the ”blank” project that the artist has been creating since 2011, “The Blank to Overcome” utilizes air pumps, power supply control circuitry, water, solution, glycerin, ethanol and electricity to produce bubbles in the air. The theme of ”blanks” denotes a space for an unsolved ”inquiry” through the perspectives for thinking about the post-3.11 present: how the bubbles are always shifting as a giant cluster, almost without mass or structure, and the facing up to this; and the framework since modernity that has prescribed society, and the ”involved” or the ”other”. From this work debate will surely emerge.

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克服するための空白

アーティストが2011年から作成している「ブランク」プロジェクトの一部である「TheBlankto Overcome」は、エアポンプ、電源制御回路、水、溶液、グリセリン、エタノール、電気を利用して空気中に気泡を生成します。 「空白」のテーマは、3.11以降の現在について考えるための視点を通して、未解決の「問い合わせ」のためのスペースを示しています。泡は、ほとんど質量や構造がなく、巨大なクラスターとして常にシフトしており、これに直面しています。 ; そして、社会を規定してきた近代以来の枠組み、そして「関与する」または「その他」。 この仕事から議論が確実に浮かび上がるでしょう。

ポンプ

Michaela Pnacekova

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.

MARTIN HESSELMEIER & ANDREAS MUXEL

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.

John Butler

Gaitkeeper
“Just be yourself, and nobody else”. Our motions, as distinctive as our faces, will soon be captured and interned. Gaitkeeper is a biometric control suite designed to counter the challenge of ‘Locomotive Camouflage’. LoCam, which combines the physical control of dance with the unpredictability of performance art, is rapidly being adopted by civic insurgents. Gaitkeeper units, based on the off-the-shelf Kiva chassis, are now being deployed as standard counter measures.

Jordan Wolfson

요르단 울프슨
ジョーダンウォルフソン

Female Figure

The stare of the animatronic sculpture is so intense, it would put anyone uncomfortable. The mask is probably there as a way to avoid creating a human face using animatronics but it also definitely adds to the creepiness of the overall look. The importance of the gaze is found throughout Wolfson’s work but it finds here a very special interpretation. He gives the ability to gaze to two different entities, a stripper and a robot, who are by definition never supposed to look up. The visitor is no longer in control of the situation, creating the awkwardness that is at the core of the work.

ALWIN NIKOLAIS

Noumenon

A truly universal artist, the American Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) devoted his life to a radical form of staged art he called “dance theater.” Inspired (perhaps unconsciously) by the experiments of Bauhaus members such as Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s, Nikolais devised a style of abstract dance that encompassed costumes, stage sets, choreography, lighting, and music, all under his control. Also in 1963, Nikolais met analog synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, who was at the time just starting his business in New York. He was fascinated by the sounds of Moog’s machines, and with the money provided by a a Guggenheim Fellowship, Nikolais bought the first ever commercially produced Moog synthesizer. It was the primary sound-source for all of Nikolais’ scores from 1963 to 1975. The instrument is now housed at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Cassils

Inextinguishable fire
The title of the piece references Harun Farocki’s 1969 film of the same name, which approaches the impossible task of effectively depicting the horror of napalm on film. Cassils’s gesture of self-immolation speaks to both the desire for–and the impossibility of–knowing such horror, even while decisively aiming to approach it. Though the stunt is a simulation of violence, it still presents real danger. This possibly volatile situation–and the attempt to control it–is captured to create an image where danger, empathy for those experiencing violence, and the privilege of removal from such circumstance operate simultaneously in one transparent performance.

Yasmin Whitlock

Yasmin Whitlock

“When you look into the work of designer Yaz Whitlock, you can’t help but notice the dichotomy: elements of fertility and celebrations of the placenta are blended into symbols of birth control.” Pedro Milanezi

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“Lorsque vous examinez le travail du designer Yaz Whitlock, vous ne pouvez pas vous empêcher de remarquer la dichotomie: des éléments de fertilité et des célébrations du placenta sont mélangés dans des symboles de contrôle des naissances.” Pedro Milanezi

MATTHIJS MUNNIK

Microscopic Opera

Les micro-organismes peuvent-ils aussi être des artistes? Comment notre relation à ces créatures change-t-elle, après qu’elles sont vues dans un contexte artistique et théâtral? À la recherche d’un micro-organisme qui aurait les qualités d’un interprète, j’ai été présenté à C. elegans; un petit ver, de moins d’un millimètre de longueur, qui se déplaçait aussi élégant que son nom l’indique et la première créature à avoir séquencé tout son génome. J’ai été intrigué lorsqu’un chercheur m’a dit que, pour distinguer les vers au microscope, il utilisait différentes mutations qui modifiaient la façon dont ils se déplaçaient. Certains se déplacent en spirale, d’autres ont roulé ou ont des contractions et certains sont devenus morbides obèses à cause de leurs mutations. Dans mon installation, j’ai cinq boîtes de Pétri remplies de cinq vers mutés différents, chacun se déplaçant légèrement différemment. Ces cinq groupes d’interprètes sont filmés avec un microscope USB diffusé en direct sur les cinq écrans. J’ai écrit un logiciel spécial qui suit les vers et traduit leurs mouvements en sons, faisant d’eux les interprètes non avertis de la musique dans le monde macroscopique au-dessus de leurs têtes. Alors que les chercheurs sont presque comme des dieux pour ces vers impuissants, les contrôlant de leur première à leur dernière division cellulaire , j’espérais donner aux vers le pouvoir de nous affecter également dans notre monde.

Push 1 stop and Woulg

Interpolate
Interpolate incorporates live coding and generative processes to create an audio/visual performance where visuals control audio, and audio controls visuals. Stark, minimal, generative 3D geometry and particle systems take the audience through the music, conveying the physicality of the sound while mapping out the emotional landscape of the melodies. To interpolate means to determine an intermediate value or term in a series by calculating it from surrounding known values; on stage Push 1 stop and Woulg send data wirelessly to each other in order to be able to patch new interactions between audio and visuals in real time, and interpolate the missing data between sound and image.

Rachel Rossin

Stalking the Trace
Stalking the Trace est une installation VR multi-spectateurs qui se déroule dans une série d’enceintes, renforcées par l’audio, l’éclairage et les projections pour créer une atmosphère immersive sensorielle dans la galerie. Rossin utilise le mouvement du spectateur à travers l’espace comme méthode pour interroger le désir humain de contrôle et d’agence, et la notion de temps avec le sujet humain en son centre.
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Stalking the Trace is a multi viewer VR installation, takes place within a series of enclosures, heightened by audio, lighting and projections to create a sensory immersive atmosphere within the gallery. Rossin utilises the movement of the viewer through the space as a method to interrogate the human desire for control and agency, and the notion of time with the human subject at its centre.
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Stalking the Trace – это многопользовательская VR-инсталляция, действие которой происходит в серии ограждений, усиленных звуком, освещением и проекциями для создания чувственной иммерсивной атмосферы в галерее. Россин использует движение зрителя в пространстве как метод исследования человеческого стремления к контролю и свободе действий, а также понятия времени с человеческим субъектом в его центре.

marnix de nijs

PIVOT POINT – ICHIHARA
‘Pivot Point – Ichihara’ is an interactive site-specific installation. Standing on a controller pod you navigate over and through a 3D terrain where gravity seems to have disappeared, you gradually become tele-present in a parallel projected space by exploring a mediated version of the venue, it’s direct surroundings and the Ichihara region. A cinematic journey to a fascinating point cloud realm, precise in details but simultaneously abstract and dreamlike.The kidney shaped interface is covered with capacitive sensors and mounted on a pole, touching this interface right, left, up or down aims the virtual camera accordingly. When you release the navigation pole the virtual camera automatically starts spiralling back to the initial starting point your journey and temporary centre of the universe, the Asohbara Art House.

Eric Singer/LEMUR

LEMUR GuitarBot
File Festival
The “LEMUR GuitarBot” is a robotically controlled electric slide guitar-like instrument. It is comprised of four independently controllable units which can pick and slide extremely rapidly. Resembling neither a traditional robot nor a guitar, it is a new type of instrument with markedly different capabilities than a human guitarist.

daniel gazana

atro enlevo

Entouré d’une atmosphère dense obtenue par la manipulation de voix de chansons anciennes et utilisant divers fragments de compositions industrielles, élaborés selon les paramètres réglables utilisés dans des logiciels spécifiques manipulés par un contrôleur MIDI, l’œuvre «Atro Enlevo» conduit l’auditeur dans l’obscurité et sortilège mystérieux.

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work atro enlevo

Kimchi and Chips

Difference and Repetition
The title references Deleuzes thesis ‘Difference and Repetition’ – his attempt to understand reality without referring to identities. The artists aim to ‘unidentify’ the audience – to criticize the bubbles of reality which technology has helped us to build around ourselves. By allowing ourselves to remove our identity occasionally, we can better understand the thoughts of those we disagree with and therefore better work together to build a combined reality. Difference (in both senses) is generated by the motion control system which continuously changes the pose of the mirrors relative to the viewer. This movement disrupts space itself, creating a transformation similar to that of a Lorentz transformation when one travels close to the speed of light. This causes space itself to compress, twist and break, giving the viewer a tool for observing the non-absolute nature of time.

Ief Spincemaille

Reverse Blinking
Imagine that your head is captured inside a photo camera. It is completely dark. Only when the shutter opens en closes, you see the world in a flash. The shutter moves so fast that nothing has time to move. Everything where you point your gaze at, becomes like a photograph. A memory. Something that has been, but isn’t anymore. You see people as frozen figures, whole streets as untouched moments. Life as a sort of dia show. “Reverse Blinking” creates this experience. It is a completely closed helmet with two shutters in front of the eyes. They are controllable by the user. Reverse Blinking works on batteries and can be freely used in or outside the museum. It is best used where there is a lot of movement and people. “Reverse Blinking” is part of a series of art works, through which the artist tries to add video and photographical effects to our natural way of seeing.

Antoni Rayzhekov and Katharina Köller

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.

Liam Young

Where the City Can’t See
Directed by speculative architect Liam Young and written by fiction author Tim Maughan, ‘Where the City Can’t See’ is the world’s first narrative fiction film shot entirely with laser scanners, designed in collaboration with Alexey Marfin. The computer vision systems of driverless cars google maps, urban management systems and CCTV surveillance are now fundamentally reshaping urban experience and the cultures of our city. Set in the Chinese owned and controlled Detroit Economic Zone (DEZ) and shot using the same scanning technologies used in autonomous vehicles, we see this near future city through the eyes of the robots that manage it. Exploring the subcultures that emerge from these new technologies the film follows a group of young car factory workers across a single night, as they drift through the smart city point clouds in a driverless taxi, searching for a place they know exists but that the map doesn’t show.

Índice

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

Karen Lancel & Hermen Maat

Paranoid Panopticum

Entering The Paranoid Panopticum you will run across your own fixation on control. While you will be able to control the visual by mirror and video- projection, a shift in the perception of reality takes place. Controlling changes into fear of being controlled, maximizing control becomes its own threat. In the Paranoid Panopticum you are haunted by your own mirrored projections. You can play with your own projection in a paradox based on the myth of Echo, Narcissus and his mirrored image. At the moment where Narcissus commits suicide, the mirrored image of the visitor is ‘suicided’. At this point the story starts over again.

SANKAI JUKU

山海塾

butoh

TOBARI

“Over the 90 minute performance, I feel no less than transported. There are eight male performers, including Ushio Amagatsu himself. The dancers often move slowly, with incredible muscular control, fluidity and elegance. And suddenly the spell will be broken and they’ll run across the stage, their painted bodies leaving clouds of white powder hanging in the air like a shadow or ghost. Slow sustained movements are countered with tiny, minute gestures of the fingers. Hands are often gnarled, the joints contorted with incredible tension. It is mysterious, hypnotic and strange. The countenance of the performers is most arresting – behind the white paint, their faces reveal the fragility, humility, vulnerability and truth of their humanity.”Day Helesic

JORG NIEHAGE

Samplingplong
File Festival

Randomly selected, acoustically usable finds (electronic junk, relays, plastic toys,compressed air valves, pneumatically operated components) are combined with cables and tubes. Via a device controlled by computer, they are turned into interactive instruments. An improvised ensemble evolves, from which – per mouse-over and mouse-click -short miniature compositions of dense rhythmic clicks, hisses, whirs, hums and crackles can be elicited. A tapestry of sound bursts forth from the floral-like web of cables and tubes. The installation can be used by the projected mouse-cursor: rolling over the improvised instruments causes small sound events. Activating the installation by rolling over its parts enables the user to play spontaneous improvisations. Clicking these objects starts short programs of loop-like compositions. Small “techno-compositions en miniature”, rhythmic patterns of analog (or real) sounds; a physical low-tech simulation of electronic, digital music, perhaps an ironic comment on interactivity.

Di Mainstone & Joanna Berzowska

Skorpions
LUTTERGILL
Skorpions are a set of kinetic electronic garments that move and change on the body in slow, organic motions.They breathe and pulse, controlled by their own internal programming. They are not “interactive” artifacts insofar as their programming does not respond to simplistic sensor data. They have intentionality; they are programmed to live, to exist, to subsist. They are living behavioral kinetic sculptures that exploit characteristics such as control, anticipation and unpredictability. They have their own personalities, their own fears and desires.

KATAGAI Hazuki

Accessories for Wearing Emotions
Head Accessory of Tears
I have heard somewhere that it is not yet fully understood why people shed tears.
We shed tears when feeling sad, moved, sometimes happy.
I do even when feeling angry.
We cannot control our emotions.
They sometimes cannot be stopped from overflowing to the outside even before we internally register them although they should exist within and surely derive from the inside of us.
It is as if they do not even pass through our brain – As if it is an involuntary action,
like in sports, where the body moves before we tell it to.
However, what would happen when we trace the process in reverse?
I tried to make it work from the outside in.
(Like, we sometimes pretend to be okay with an unwilling smile.)
I want to see what would happen on the inside of us if we “wear” emotions on the outside.
Hazuki Katagai

CHANG YEN TZU

Self Luminous 2 – Unbalance
Self-luminous 2 is an experimental handmade instrument shown as performance. It is a series-project which I have been working on since 2013 and finally developed into shape in 2014. I am looking for intimate and personal instrument that reflects on the relation of digital sound and light message. In computer language, light on is 1 and light off is 0. If more than 2 lamps, it could be code or readable possibility by the meanings. When I press the button or turn the knob, the message will be sent to Pure Data, and the sound will be triggered in live by Pure Data.
The Data of sound such as frequency and volume, are analysed and sent out to the second Arduino to control the light. The light, in thus case, is an intuitive element for human beings. From this point, it is really close to sound which disturbs our biological body directly. The lights are visualised and they can be transferred the into messages. The message might be readable by coincidence with the link to the code. The light is bright enough to let audience to have persistence of vision in mind. During the performance, the sound will be reproduced by code and part of it is impromptu.
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DUMBTYPE

LOVERS
Computer-controlled, five-channel video/sound installation with five video projectors, eight-channel sound system, and slide projectors […] As an image, a pair of lovers often suggests a castle of exclusion. With the sexual liberation of the last few decades, the word now has more to do with physical coupling than with the sublimity of “true love.” AIDS has added a new dimension of wariness to this pairing. The life-size dancers in Lovers are drained of life. Projected onto the black walls of a square room, the naked figures have a spectral quality. Their movements are simple and repetitive. Back and forth, they walk and run with animal grace. Their actions become familiar over time, so that it is a surprise when two of the translucent bodies come together in a virtual embrace. These ostensible lovers–more overlapping than touching–are not physically entwined.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG

장영혜중공업
Heavy Industries
dakota
I discuss how the poem controls the reader’s experience and how this control affects its possible interpretations. The control is mostly executed by limiting the reader’s freedom over reading. Reading time, direction and duration are determined by the poem. It is only possible to start the poem, but not rewind, stop or fast-forward it. Furthermore, the manipulation of speed affects reading in many ways. In the fast extreme the effect is illegibility, but more subtly used speed creates varieties of emphasis and de-emphasis. The effect of emphasis of this kind, I argue, creates different layers of readings and invites re-reading. These different readings require different cognitive modes, which mirror our contemporary reading habits. Not being in control of the reading process also leads to a scattered sense of unity, one of postmodernism’s essential traits. While reading the poem I also question why I read as I do, and by doing so I hope to present more general traits of how to approach digital literature.

morton subotnick

silver apples of the moon
image detail : Buchla 100 synthesizer
Morton Subotnick helped bring the modular voltage-controlled synthesizer to a state of readiness for performance and  recording and was the first composer to take advantage of the new instrument’s potential. Composed in 1967 specifically for release on Nonesuch, Silver Apples of the Moon was Subotnick’s first full-length LP of electronic music, and the album became an international sensation.

Robin Baumgarten

line-wobbler
file 2019
‘Line Wobbler’ is a one-dimensional dungeon crawler with a custom controller made out of a steel spring and a five-metre long LED strip display. The entire game runs on an Arduino, with sound, particle effects and 120+fps. ‘Line Wobbler’ is an award-winning experiment in minimalism in game design, making use of novel input mechanics, retro sound, and the incorporation of physical architectural space into the game. In the game, players navigate obstacles and fight enemies to reach the exit, in a series of increasingly difficult levels. Movement is controlled by bending the Wobble controller forward and back, while enemies are attacked by flicking the spring at them. Obstacles such as lava fields, conveyor belts and slopes challenge the navigation skills of the player.

Studio Drift

L’Orfeo.
Dutch National Touring Opera’s production of L’Orfeo.
Artist Lonneke Gordijn, together with director Monique Wagenmakers and choreographer Nanine Linning, created a new interpretation of L’Orfeo.
The kinetic sculpture EGO, specially developed for LOrfeo, is a handwoven block controlled by algorithms and motors. The block has the ability to shift its shape and state, embodying Orfeo’s perspectives and thoughts. The oldest opera combined with modern cutting edge technology.

Ralf Baecker

Putting The Pieces Back Together Again

The kinetic installation “Putting the Pieces Back Together Again” is a complex system with self-organizing and emergent behaviour, at the same time it is an artistic inquiry and meditation on contemporary scientific methodology. The installation investigates non-hierarchical communication and collective behaviour by implementing such a system physically through many electro-mechanical actors.
The Installation consists of 1250 stepper motors arranged in a two dimensional grid of two by two meters. Each motor is equipped with a pointer made from white acrylic glass. The radii of the pointers are chosen to intersect with the pointers of its neighbours. All motors are excited with the same alternating current that let them move initially in a random direction. Each actor is at the same time sensing its environment. In the event of a collision the pointers reverse their turning direction. This is achieved through a custom motor control circuit. Through the interplay of many entities a complex behaviour emerges on the surface of the installation. By manipulating the signals during runtime the system will form spontaneous pattern on its surface. It seems like they are negotiating it’s position with nearby actors. By this the system is showing behaviour of self-organization. The installation drifts through various activation levels during its run time by this it constantly evolves new formations and constellations (crystallization).

KARINA SMIGLA-BOBINSKI

SIMULACRA
file festival

“SIMULACRA” is an optophysical experimental arrangement. At its heart are four LCD monitor panels, which are assembled in the form of a hollow square, and installed at eye level in the middle of the room. The ensemble appears internally gutted, overgrown and embraced. A tangle of cables and control devices pours out of the middle of the square. All around it several magnifying lenses dangle from chains. The imageless glaring ray of the monitors looks as if the images had fallen out of them. What remains is the essence of the medium: Light.It is an impressive, wondrous experience when images suddenly appear from the pure white by the mere glance through a seemingly transparent film. But if you turn the lens in front of your eyes, the polarizing structure of the film creates wild color shifts or even complementary negative images.

Raffaello D’Andrea and Max Dean

The Table
The Table is an autonomous robot with an automatic mechanized system able to react to unexpected movement or obstacles and to carry out one or more tasks by executing a program in a given environment. As is the case with most “prototypical” robotic works, or single editions, the basic physical components can be pre-manufactured then modified or custom built to meet specific needs. In the case of The Table, the control system and its algorithms were entirely conceived by Max Dean and Raffallo D’Andrea. All the components, including the wheels and motors, were also custom manufactured, giving the installation a unique character. The singular characteristic of this work lies in the robotic nature of the table and it’s capacity to operate in an environment specifically designed for it. For example, the shade of red painted on the floor is directly linked to the effective functioning of the camera and the control software. Also, the space lights used in the room produce a light that prevents the creation of shadows, which the software could mistakenly interpret as a physical presence.

TRACY FEATHERSTONE

Wearable Structure: Head Organized

As estruturas vestíveis materializam nossa luta diária entre o controle e o caos. O equilíbrio é precário e pode tombar para um lado ou para o outro em um instante. Os materiais de construção tradicionalmente usados para construir ambientes residenciais ou outras garantias arquitetônicas são usados de forma frenética. Rapidamente, e talvez desesperadamente tentando impor ordem a uma situação que está saindo do controle. O papel tradicional de estrutura ou estabilidade torna-se móvel quando colocado na figura, permitindo ao indivíduo entrar na ilusão de estabilidade. O elemento móvel / vestível da obra subverte ainda mais as tentativas de controle e ordem. Semelhante à maneira como a água abrirá um novo caminho em torno de uma obstrução, o participante encontra novas maneiras de se movimentar em suas rotinas diárias de maneira normal.

DILLER + SCOFIDIO

The Blur Building (an architecture of atmosphere)
The Blur Building is a media pavilion for Swiss EXPO 2002 at the base of Lake Neuchatel in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland.From piles in the water, a tensegrity system of rectilinear struts and diagonal rods cantilevers out over the lake. Ramps and walkways weave through the tensegrity system, some of them providing a counterweight for the structure. The form is based on the work of Buckminster Fuller.The pavilion is made of filtered lake water shot as a fine mist through 13,000 fog nozzles creating an artificial cloud that measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 65 feet high. A built-in weather station controls fog output in response to shifting climatic conditions such as temperature, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed.The public can approach Blur via a ramped bridge. The 400 foot long ramp deposits visitors at the center of the fog mass onto a large open-air platform where movement is unregulated. Visual and acoustical references are erased along the journey toward the fog leaving only an optical “white-out” and the “white-noise” of pulsing water nozzles. Prior to entering the cloud, each visitor responds to a questionnaire/character profile and receives a “braincoat” (smart raincoat). The coat is used as protection from the wet environment and storage of the personality data for communication with the cloud’s computer network. Using tracking and location technologies, each visitor’s position can be identified and their character profiles compared to any other visitor.In the Glass Box, a space surrounded by glass on six sides, visitors experience a “sense of physical suspension only heightened by an occasional opening in the fog.” As visitors pass one another, their coats compare profiles and change color indicating the degree of attraction or repulsion, much like an involuntary blush – red for affinity, green for antipathy. The system allows interaction among 400 visitors at any time.Visitors can climb another level to the Angel Bar at the summit. The final ascent resembles the sensation of flight as one pierces through the cloud layer to the open sky. Here, visitors relax, take in the view, and choose from a large selection of commercial waters, municipal waters from world capitals, and glacial waters. At night, the fog will function as a dynamic and thick video screen.

DAITO MANABE AND MOTOI ISHIBASHI

particles at ycam

In this “illumination installation”, blinking lights floating in midair create a fantastic afterimage.

A giant rail construction with an organically spiral-shaped spatial structure is put up in the exhibition space. Rolling on that rail are countless balls with built-in full-color LEDs and communication devices. From terminals set up inside the venue, visitors can send commands to the balls to control the timing and coloration of their blinking, and thereby draw three-dimensional afterimage in the air. Through the fusion of a minutely designed rail construction and communication control technology, an unprecedented form of spatial expression was realized in the form of a flexible “light structure“.