Synapse: Collaboration between the arts and sciences has the potential to create new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives; when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us. For the past decade, the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) has provided opportunities for artists and scientists to work together. Through Synapse, and in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, ANAT offers residencies, the Synapse Database and now ANAT is pleased to announce its latest initiative: a moderated elist discussion on contemporary art and science collaborations in fields including bioart, artificial intelligence, robotics, climate change and space, amongst others. You can subscribe here. Continue reading

People are used to the sound of skin played by percussion instruments. Most of them consist of at least one membrane (skin) that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with parts of a player’s body, or with some sort of implement, to produce sound. But what if the skin is human? Percussion denotes the collision of two bodies producing sound. Then what if both the two colliding bodies are human? This scenario is not a morbid fantasy but the core of the latest Daan Birkmann’s creation: Skinstrument. It’s a musical instrument that can be played by two or more people. Continue reading

According to a report from Kansas State University, the “sounds” of individual molecules have been captured.

Part of a graphical depiction of the mole­cular vibrations. (Courtesy Max Planck Inst. for Nuclear Physics)

The report, which can be found in the February 6, 2008 edition of World Science News, says that physicists have recorded “tiny vibrations of individual molecules, that could be called sounds.” Continue reading

Rick Grierson makes music with his mind. [via]

Lifeforms, by Stanza, are a series of generated paintings, based on the artists sampled and sequenced DNA profile. “My DNA was sequenced originally in 2003. I have made some slight changes and incorporated more data from my DNA sequences. The audio is playing along sequences of my DNA string.”

Stanza is a UK based artist who specialises in net art, multimedia, and electronic music. His award winning online projects have been invited for exhibition in digital festivals around the world, and Stanza also travels extensively to present his net art, giving performances of his audiovisual interactions, and making exhibitions. Stanza is interested in the engagement of the public/audience as a creative user across a variety of formats, from the web to cd rom and gallery installation.

Ebb & Flow was a series of three performances streamed live over the web that explored the relationship of technology, sound, and biological processes. Conceptualized by web-artists Nina Sobell and Jesse Gilbert, Ebb and Flow consisted of weekly webcasts of electronic experiments carried out using musical instruments, electroencephalographic devices (EEG), MIDI, and video.

Drawing on Sobell’s experimentation with EEG feedback, which dates back to her residency at the VA Neuropsychology Lab, Sepulveda, CA in the early 1970s — Brainwave Drawing (1973) — the team used IBVA software to translate the brain wave data into sound, via a MIDI bridge. Continue reading

In an earlier NMR Weekly, I wrote that UCLA molecular biologists had turned protein sequences into original compositions of classical music. For those who may be interested, there is now A Protein Primer- A Musical Introduction to Protein Structure which talks about the 20 different amino acids incorporated into proteins that can be assigned to musical scales.

The duration of each note varies with the number of DNA codons associated with the amino acid. The DNA codons are represented by a harp playing the three bases of each codon under its amino acid. The last three codons to sound are stop codons and do not correspond to any amino acid. Here’s a sample Amino Acid scale:

From Genome Technology Online July 30, 2007: If a Patented Gene Appears in a Song, Who Gets the Royalty?

Sure, genetic music was the out-of-left-field offshoot of the Human Genome Project, but we can’t deny that the field — such as it is — has shown surprising longevity. If you have a free minute, check out this newly issued patent. It covers “music generated by decoding and transcribing genetic information within a DNA sequence into a music signal having melody and harmony,” according to the abstract. The inventors listed are a couple of lawyers (hence the title of this post). Continue reading

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Oculog is a new system for performing electronic music where a video-based eye movement system is used to control the sound. The work of Juno Kim, Greg Schiemer and Terumi Narushima, all of the University of Wollongong, Australia, Oculog was presented as a paper at the NIME 2007 conference. It is a project in progress.

Musical control, traditionally dependent on and conditioned by the muscular responses of performers who hold and touch their instruments, is here expanded to include electronically sensed choreographed music. Oculog is not the first to use biological signals – you can read about earlier efforts in Kim, Schiemer and Narushima’s paper, “Oculog: Playing with Eye Movements” presented at the NIME 2007 conference. Continue reading