Audio Data, Synthesis, Patching & Streaming

Audio Signal Processing/Digital Sound Workshop: Rotterdam, 1 - 4 September 2005; Applications Deadline August 19, 2005–In a four-day workshop hosted by V2_, sound artists Frank Barknecht and Aymeric Mansoux will introduce the basics of Audio Signal Processing (ASP) in the fields of real-time music production. This workshop specifically targets people who want to develop their work in the digital sound field or those people curious about the processes involved behind the audio software they already use.

The program starts with a theoretical introduction to the basics of digital sound, after which participants will work with the open source software Pure Data (PD) to turn theory into practice. The workshop also teaches and demonstrates which free technologies are available for audio streaming, such as icecast, ogg and vorbis. A Rotterdam Headphone Lounge will wrap up this four-day workshop on Sunday 4 September.
Continue reading

and Kitten Scanner

“The Ambient Experience suite uses Philips’ lighting and consumer electronics to create a welcoming and patient-friendly environment for children undergoing medical scans. Featuring a Philips Brilliance CT (computed tomography) scanner in a room with curved walls, it lets young patients choose a theme - or ‘ambient environment’ - for the room by waving a radio frequency card over a reader to project cartoons and animation themes onto the walls and ceiling using Philips technology. They can also use the Kitten Scanner.

Designed specifically for children scheduled for a CT scan, the Kitten Scanner will let them ’scan’ a stuffed elephant or their own toys at the touch of a button. Animation appears on a screen that shows children what doctors are looking for inside the toy and tells them a story about each one. The aim is to show them how the machine works and help ease any anxiety they may be feeling.” (Via PhysOrg)

BODILY (Trans)Formations

BODILY (Trans)Formations :: Volume 1 Number 3 November 2004: ” ?[T]he body should be understood not as a constant amid flux but as an epitome of that flux? (Csordas 1999: 1-2).

This issue of Scan takes as its guiding principle the idea that bodies, far from being bounded and inert flesh-sacks from which each of us navigates and negotiates our way in the world, are kinaesthetic ?inter-sites? of (un)becoming. It is in and through the regulation and codification of ?flesh? that bodies come to matter, that subjectivities are formed and transformed. Of course, claims such as this are by no means new. In fact, in the context of post-structuralism, such claims have more or less become truisms. But simply proclaiming that bodily being is the dynamic effect of historically and culturally specific processes of inscription contributes little to our understanding of the complex heterogeneous ways in which bodies and selves are formed and transformed.
Continue reading

Sound in the Work of LAURIE ANDERSON

Laurie Anderson: The Record of the Time is a 30 year retrospective of Laurie Anderson’s works that opened last week at the NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo. It will run through October 2, 2005.

Laurie Anderson (born 1947) rose to acclaim on the New York art scene of the early 1980s with her distinctive electronic performances, and continues to be a major globally active artist, one the very few truly international stars of performance art today. Utilizing synthesizers, video and computer graphics as well as various electronic devices of her own design, she blends diverse elements - music, moving images, language, action - into eclectic cocktails of experimental ideas and avant garde modes of expression that appeal to a broad popular audience. She is, in a word, the very embodiment of colorful postmodern performance.
Continue reading

Synthetic Meteor Showers

The Reentry Series uses multiple synthetic meteors to produce luminous, ephemeral drawings in the upper atmosphere. These drawings will persist for only seconds, at most minutes. The behavior of individual synthetic meteors will be similar to that of naturally occurring meteors. However their composition and configuration will be controlled, exhibiting various elementary geometric relationships which will seem obviously premeditated and systematic to any observer. That these are deliberate renderings will be inescapable. The Reentry Series is one of several proposed series of dynamic environmental works which involve the synthesis and aestheticised use of otherwise naturally occurring, very large scale, time dependent visual phenomena.
Continue reading

Gifts in the Urban Landscape

Cracks in the Pavement: Gifts in the Urban Landscape is a multi-phased, interactive project that calls attention to the ?in-between? spaces encountered throughout everyday life. The project focuses on details within the urban landscape and encourages close inspection of our social space. This summer, artists based in locations around the world will respond to what they find in their urban environments by making art objects designed to be placed in sites that intrigue them?at bus shelters, in alleys, under bridges, in libraries or post offices, or deep in park bushes. Members of the public are invited to search for these site-specific works using maps and clues provided at the web site. Art works featured in Cracks in the Pavement may be kept by whoever finds them. Works not found will be allowed to remain in the landscape indefinitely to be encountered by chance, displaced, or transformed by the very environmental forces that define each piece’s context.
Continue reading

HTML Wrestling

“How did you come up with this idea? What was the concept behind this Infomera HTML Wrestling?

The idea was to create an ephemeral project for the Internet. The name of the website is the combination of to ideas “informacion” (Spanish: information) and “efimera” (Spanish: ephemeral; feminine version). I deal a lot with the isis and tropos process with objects and I was hoping to create a metaphor of this on the web.

Infomera.net is a process that happens on the web, two artists confront each other in a context elaborated as a metaphor within a specific period of time. Infomera.net is a conceptual performance/happening elaborated as a ludic expression that demonstrates the diffusion and execution of the technique between the confronting artists. It?s not really a fight; it?s more of a collective expression between two people, an event of user/artist expectations and unique situation’s.” From Ephemeral Angel: Arcangel Constantini, Wrestler, Artist, Curator, Petite Mort, Issue #3.

Looped

3 x 3–by Gemma Shusterman: the project looks at the fundamental relationship between audience and performer by putting the audience in the active role as collaborator rather than simply the passive role of observer. The performer becomes a conduit for a structure created by the audience. The audience in turn is given active involvement in creating their own experience and becomes engaged in an exchange with other audience members controlling the course of the piece.

The project consists of a web interface which allows the audience member to enter coordinates that map to the performer’s space. These coordinates are then sent to a microcontroller (using the cockroach microcontroller) which controls the power supplied to the selected portions of the space. It is then the performer’s job to find a way to move from one section of the space to another in improvisational form. The subsequent performance is then broadcast back to the site via webcam. video documentation. full video from live performance on 12.08.2004.

FINAL DAYS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SELECTION!

These are the final days to submit an application for the first International Prize for Performance, a unique and innovative initiative, launched by the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento (Italy), in collaboration with drodesera>centrale fies and with the support of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto.

Artists of all nationalities, thirty-five years or younger, can participate by completing the electronic application located on the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporea of Trento?s website by August 1, 2005 (For more information, consult the official announcement at http://www.workartonline.net or send inquiries to performance[at]galleriacivica.it).
Continue reading

The Story Is in the Theory

“…All theories tell a story. They have a beginning, in which people and ideas, models, molecules and governing equations take the stage. Their roles are defined; there is a puzzle to solve. Einstein sets his characters into motion so ingeniously, using entropy to tease out the parallels between moving molecules and the energy of light. The story develops; there are consequences of Einstein’s approach. And at the end, his view of light as quantized and particular confronts the reality of the heretofore unexplained photoelectric effect. The postscripted future, of all else that can be understood and all new things that can be made, is implicit.

Perceptive reader Anne Poduska notes that the photoelectric paper “is particularly interesting because of the layering of perspectives (similar to legends being passed from one generation to the next, with each storyteller adding their own flair/details).”…” From Storied Theory by Roald Hoffmann, American Scientist Online.