Shell of

FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival
Marc Vilanova – Cascade – Spain

Waterfalls are a continuous source of infrasonic frequency found in nature. Although inaudible to humans, they play a crucial role in ecosystems, especially for migratory birds who use them as a compass. However, many waterfalls have lost their frequencies due to climate change. The work creates an immersive experience in which the audience interacts with the visualization of sound waves, experiencing the vibration of sound through illuminated strings.

Bio

Marc Vilanova is a sound and visual artist who works at the intersection of art, science and nature. Vilanova’s artistic production has always been led by a spirit of innovation fueled by an interest in new media. His practice combines sound/light installations, performance, and sculpture.

Credits

This work was partially carried out within the scope of the EMAP program at gnration, with the support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme, the Avatar Center in Quebec City and the Ramon Llull Institute.

Photo:
Eloise Coomber

Piano
Iwai’s Piano — As Image Media (1995), a later sound work, is related to these early interactive experiments. Here the user, seated at the piano, triggers a flow of images that depress the piano’s keys; a consequence of this action releases yet another flight of images. The resulting interactive installation synthesizes two different aesthetics: sounds (simple melodies), images and a mechanical object (the piano) with digital media. A projected score and computer-generated imagery transform the piano into image media, hence the work’s name. Sound is the triumphant component in these works, for it activates and shapes the visual work. But the visual aspect of Iwai’s installations is lovely. His interactive systems appeal to the creative impulses of adults and children alike with their celebration of animation, computer potential, and the joy of sound.07

frequencies (light quanta)

The project is part of an ongoing process entitled «frequencies», exploring basic sound and light dichotomic systems. Here, frequencies (light quanta) stems from a fascination towards science, light, and granular synthesis allowing to create clouds/grains of sounds. The conceptual focus lies in the quantum — the smallest measurable value of energy —, on the smallness of matter. The whole project is based on the possible conceptual relationships between basic quantum physics principles applied to the audio-visual creative process: particles, probabilities, wave/particle duality and discontinuity. Metaphorically structured around these notions, the audio-visual composition stems from 100 sound and light micro-sequences that develop themselves, generating an ever expending but yet disruptive form in time and space. With the use of randomness, the vectorial graphics are always creating new ways to look at the visual, physically superimposing pattern images.

Threshold Release Ornament
MSHR is the art collective of Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo collaboratively builds and explores systems composed of sound, light, sculpture, software and circuitry. Their practice is a self-transforming cybernetic entity with its outputs patched into its inputs, the resulting emergent form serving as its navigational system. These outputs primarily take the form of installations and performances that integrate interface design with generative systems and a distinctive formalist approach. MSHR’s name is a modular acronym, designed to hold varied ideas over time. MSHR emerged from the art collective Oregon Painting Society in 2011 in Portland, Oregon, USA.

n-Polytope: Behaviors in Light and Sound after Iannis Xenakis
N_Polytope: Behaviors in Light and Sound After Iannis Xenakis is a spectacular light and sound performance-installation combining cutting edge lighting, lasers, sound, sensing and machine learning software inspired by composer Iannis Xenakis’s radical 1960s- 1970s works named Polytopes (from the Greek ‘poly’, many and ‘topos’, space). As large scale, immersive architectural environments that made the indeterminate and chaotic patterns and behaviour of natural phenomena experiential through the temporal dynamics of light and the spatial dynamics of sound, the Polytopes still to this day are relatively unknown but were far ahead of their time. N_Polytope is based on the attempt to both re-imagine Xenakis’ work with probabilistic/stochastic systems with new techniques as well as to explore how these techniques can exemplify our own historical moment of extreme instability.