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

Share Festival & 02l > Outside Standing Level @ Transmediale Festival Berlin 2008 presents: The Special Player, augmented environment in algorithmic contextualized music and The Shaidon Effect DJ Set Event Session at C-Base Berlin, Rungestrasse 20 - 2. HH - 10179 Berlin.

The Special Player is an interactive performance in the context of transmediale 08 - conspire. Involving a sophisticated responsive motion tracking environment, four contemporary dancers and its visitors, The Special Player explores a massively disquieting conspirative narration. Continue reading

LocoSound is a flux audio experience that is synchronized with the landscape viewed from a train window. Through a system of GPS tracking, the audience can tune into a radio frequency when boarding a train wagon and become part of an audio visual experience that is based on: (1) a sound experience that has been created for a specific train visual (the landscape between Zurich and Basel for example); (2) a system that is sensitive and responsive to any delays, unexpected stops or other real-time changes in the train ride. The experience is therefore not linear but rather an interactive and responsive, taking into account the singular experience of a particular train ride. The audio concept allows for a new type of music composition, that can also include narratives. Continue reading

Non-Event Presents a Special 10th Anniversary Performance by THE UNDR QUARTET with Brendan Murray: James Coleman: theremin; Greg Kelley: trumpet; Vic Rawlings: prepared/ amplified cello, circuitry; Liz Tonne: voice :: January 24, 2008; 8:00 pm :: Swedenborg Chapel, 50 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA (Harvard Square)

Formed in 1997, New England’s UNDR QUARTET are groundbreaking practitioners of low volume improvisation. Their performances are marked by a strong sense of intimacy and a deep sensitivity to the performance space. Continue reading

Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University.

Adam will be answering reader’s questions in the comments section below until January 31, 2008. Continue reading

SARoskop by Martin Hesselmeier & Karin Lingnau @ lab 30 - A matrix of 25 tubes visualizing electromagnetic waves that can be triggered by certain wave length activities, e.g. by cell phones. The project SARoskop is dealing with the visualisation of electromagnetic waves. In a matrix of up to 25 objects the installation is composed as an interactive sculpture reacting sensitively to the data of the proximate surrounding, transforming it into movement and interdependent oscillations. The sound of the moving mechanical parts interfuses the viewers perspective on the installation and together with blue-lighted displays supports a vibrancy of its own. Continue reading

Driftnet - Fly Like a Bird, a project by squidsoup: Imagine flying like a bird through a musical composition that surrounds you, immerses you and reacts to your presence. Driftnet is a confluence of two ideas – bird-like flight, and a spatialised, navigable musical environment.

At one level, it experiments with intuitive methods for freely navigating 3D virtual space. Users are invited to ‘fly like a bird’ to navigate through a virtual space. Using NO worn equipment - just by flapping their arms/wings and tilting their arms and bodies – people can intuitively (and amusingly!) navigate freely in virtual space. The metaphor used harks back to childhood play, imitating birds and planes in the playground. Continue reading

The MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie), located in the historical neighbourhood of the Marais in Paris, France, invited franco-italian artist Lorella Abenavoli and Quebec artist-researcher Nicolas Reeves to present a joint installation project on the theme Listening to the Sky. This project, called NOX MATER: Study for Muons and Silence, will be presented for the first time in September 2007.

The NOX MATER project explores the relationships between the notions of place and scale by investigating the potential of two unusual materials : darkness and silence. More precisely, it is an attempt to connect two places that are the diametrically opposed in terms of size and scale : the uterine matrix and the Universe as a whole. In an old Parisian building, a staircase leads the visitor towards a small vaulted underground room. The walls are entirely covered with absorbing materials, making the room is almost anechoic. All the sounds and noises emitted by the visitors are instantaneously silenced. In this small underground place, darkness is total, silence is complete. Continue reading

Chris Hand was commissioned by Rick Bamford of Essential Music for All “to design and program a device that would allow a roland SP-606 sampler to be controlled by a shed. Six sheds, in fact, each one produced by a different artist or group. This was the culmination of a public art project looking at what ordinary people get up to in their sheds. Found sounds from local participants were loaded onto a sampler in each shed, along with an amplifier and speakers. Each device comprised a BASIC stamp microcontroller with an ultrasonic sensor to detect proximity of audience members, triggering random sounds on the sampler via MIDI.” Link.

Dutch artist Edo Autopoiesis is exploring an unusual, and mostly ignored side of Second Life - its wind. His installation, Resonating - With - secondlifeWind is an incredible meditative journey into a sky-based field of 100 windmills. Forever set in motion by the wind energy, each one of the windmills lifts a red object: the stronger the wind, the faster the object is lifted.

Upon reaching the top of the pole, the red object drops and hits an acoustic resonator at the bottom, producing a sound. Sounds from neighboring windmills affect the overall rhythm produced by the entire set of windmills. The ever-changing wind patterns of Second Life are the source of variety in this strange, and fully generative melody. Continue reading