Sculpt is work for sensor gloves, interactive electronics and interactive projected image that explores the relationship between synthetic sound and synthetic image through the tactile nuance of human gesture.

Robert Griffin Byron won the A.B.C. Young Composer’s Award in 1995. Since then, Byron’s chamber music and orchestral works have been heard all across Australia, the United States, and Asia. His work has been performed by the most of Australia’s state orchestras. To date, Byron has received four commissions. In 1997 the West Australian Ballet commissioned the score for the ballet Orlando. In 1998 Future Films commissioned a soundtrack for an art film by Glen Eaves called Structures. The score won the A.B.C. Young Composer Film Award in 1999. Also in 1999 the Australian Ballet commissioned the full-length ballet Mirror Mirror. In 2002 the Ensemble Arcangelo commissioned the chamber work Kaleidoscope, with support from ArtsWA.

In addition to these commissions, Byron’s Piano Sonata No. 2 (Cobalt) was premiered by Michael Kieran Harvey in 1999 at the Calloway Auditorium, U.W.A. Byron’s dance work, Enlightenment, premiered in Bloomington, Indiana, at the Black Box Theater in 2004. Byron collaborated with Choreographer Liz Shea and Lighting Designer Robert Shakespeare, exploring interactive lighting, interactive sound, and choreographic movement. Byron gained second place in the Australian National Harp Composition Competition in 2004 for the work The Moon Methinks Looks with a Watery Eye. In 2006 Byron’s acousmatic work Hip or Hype? was performed at Pixerations in Providence, Rhode Island. His most recent work Swarm, for Perriott Ensemble and Interactive electronics, was premiered by the Boston-based group Dinosaur Annex in 2007.

Byron’s electronic works have been performed at numerous conferences, including the Australasian Computer Music Conference in Melbourne (2002), Perth SPECTRUM conference (2003), Western Australia Converging Technologies conference (2003), SEAMUS conference in San Diego (2003), THRESHOLD at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana (2004), and Midwest IDEAS Festival (2004, 2005, and 2006). Byron won first place in the audio section at the 2004 and 2005 IDEAS Festivals.

Byron earned his B.Mus. from Edith Cowan in 1997. In 2000 Byron received a Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composer’s Fellowship-in-Residence, where he continued his studies. He earned his M.M. in Computer Music Composition from Indiana University while on a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006. At Indiana, Byron won the 2005 Dean’s Prize for Electroacoustic Composition. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in multimedia art at Brown University.

Bioluster is a large-scale tactile interface that offers simple, yet not immediately obvious, methods of triggering different series of sound samples. This unique interface, created with RFID & Flash technology, is paired with materials and shapes that leave the audience with a tugging sense of unwarranted nostalgia for a system that has never existed. This project has grown out of Trainor’s long use and exploration of RFID as an artistic medium to examine our changing physical relationship to computing.

Bioluster premiered on December 8, 2007 at Strange Things People Do With Electricity, an art exhibition at 911 Media Arts Center curated by Dorkbot/Seattle.

Accelerator Group is a variable group of artists, programmers, choreographers and others who collaborate to create performances, artistic prototypes, installations, and other works that explore emerging technologies in the context of material interfaces and components. Members reside in Seattle and New York with distance collaboration a key element of their creative process. Current experiments include using Flickr as a communication and documentation tool.

Shawn Decker’s Artist Statement: Initially educated as a composer of both instrumental and computer-generated music, my work has gradually evolved from primarily performance and tape-based music composition to installations intended for galleries or other spaces, as well as to interactive performance works which make use of a variety of electronic media. My current work, which involves a variety of physical and electronic media, is positioned at the intersection of music composition, the visual arts, and performance.

In my most recent work, I have become increasingly interested in the processes found in nature and in other large and complex systems, and the potential of computer programs to model or simulate such systems within time-based artworks. I have also been quite interested in creating media installations which are physical and tactile in nature, which are grounded in objects and in the creation of environments which are integrated within the gallery spaces they are presented in, and which create immersive situations which echo those found in the real world.

Within my most recent interactive installations and performances, patterns of behavior are fixed and defined only by the algorithmic process specified within the computer program embedded within a micro-controller which is typically part of each work. These algorithmic processes are designed to simulate the manner of operation of physical and natural systems. This ongoing investigation of computer-mediated processes - both as a means of producing work, and more recently as the form of the work itself - has been central to my interest in the use of computers for creative purposes.

I have also recently become increasing dissatisfied with the electronic production of sound via conventional speakers (stereophony) and have been investigating the use of mechanical and other “direct” sound production techniques that may be controlled by a computer program,. These techniques include the use of small motors to strike metal objects, piano wires, etc. and are often kinetic in nature. Due to the physical nature of these works the distinctions between sonic, visual, and spatial elements begin to blur. Another related approach I am taking is the investigation of the use of speakers in a more “raw” mode than usually used in stereophony – as single sound sources that may be summed together in sufficient quantities to form spatially immersive environments.

The use of simple mechanical devices such as surplus motors, inexpensive piezoelectric speakers, etc. also certainly has a modestly subversive anti-high-tech element to it that pervades my entire aesthetic. Rather than being interested in creating complex “high tech” systems (for instance, complex robotic systems) I instead focus on the complexity of interactions between many simple, even common, machines. In other words, I am interested in building robotic systems in an environmental /sociological manner.

Shawn Decker is a composer and artist who writes music for live performance, electronic tape, and for film and video soundtracks, and works primarily with interactive computer-based performance and with sound and electronic media installations. His work has appeared in a variety of settings ranging from small galleries to large concert halls, and has been heard on NPR, the European Broadcast System, PBS, and the Learning Channel. Recent commissions include the first permanent public sound installation ever installed in Finland, a piece for the Chicago Saxophone Quartet which has been widely performed in the US and Europe, and an interactive live-electronic score for a major work by the Mordine and Company dance ensemble. Mr. Decker also has performed with and composed for the acclaimed new music ensemble KAPTURE. In addition to writing and producing music, Mr. Decker is an Associate Professor in the Art and Technology and Sound departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to his creative work, Mr. Decker also writes and lectures, and was recently the chair of the 1997 International Symposium on the Electronic Arts. Mr. Decker received a Bachelor’s degree in music composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Master’s and Doctor’s degrees from the Northwestern University School of Music.

The design explores the utility of sound for envisioning new social, cultural and entertainment uses of public places and help us shape our relationships with each other with new social interfaces embedded in urban settings. This medium informs the audience by visualizing the different aspects of the crowd that is otherwise anonymous to each other. The audience listens to a sound collage made of the voices of people telling where they are from and if they can go back or not. As users of the system, we hear words as they are explicitly spoken to the system. The information is used to create a visual representation (based on audio analysis) for designing visuals that display patterns of activity at these location.

Lower Bay Station, Toronto’s ghost station, is used as a vessel to contain sounds that are within and below the threshold of human hearing - infrasound and tactile sound - where sound is felt rather than heard. Low frequencies created by cars and subways are contributors to the cacophony of infrasonic noise that exists deep below the rumbling of the city. These tactile sounds have also been associated with paranormal activity and ghost sightings. Kristen Roos’ audio art is informed by aspects of acoustic ecology, radio art and phonography.

Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural inquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions.

RFID and NFC: RFID is currently regarded as the replacement for barcodes in logistics and supply chain management. It is also becoming widely used for contactless ticketing, credit cards, animal tracking and e-passports. But a new set of applications and services are opening up as NFC (a new standard based on RFID) is integrated into mobile phones. Commercial applications for NFC are predicted to include ticketing, payments and service discovery, where these things can be achieved with a simple ‘touch’ of the mobile device.

But Touch is not just about incremental innovations to existing infrastructures; the technology offers many unexplored opportunities. The simple integration of tags into everyday things and places, the low-cost of NFC components and the adaptiveness of the NFC specifications are all examples of the ways in which this technology promises to be ubiquitous. These opportunities suggest that many other applications and services will be built around the technology, and that ‘touch’ may well become part of everyday life in unexpected ways.

Touch interactions: NFC and ‘contactless’ systems are intended to be easy to use for everyday transactions, the interaction is carried out with a simple ‘touch’, ‘swipe’ or ‘tap’. By using these simple actions, NFC puts a sense of human control back into otherwise complex and unwieldy ubiquitous systems. Touch is a natural, expressive gesture and can be used to create satisfying interactions. There is a rich history of industrial design, ergonomic and human factors research that can be used in the design of these systems.

Touch-interactions are significant culturally and socially; our sense of touch is a large part of the way we understand and affect the world. Touch carries meaning and this changes according to context, situation and culture. The project explores these contexts through social, cultural and ethnographic research. This cross-disciplinary research will be used as a resource for further design and prototyping.

The project will run until 2009. It is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Tou can contact them at:
hello at nearfield dot org

An acoustic instrument’s resonance is typically determined by the materials from which it is built. With The Sound of Touch, resonant materials can be chosen during the performance itself, allowing performers to shape the acoustics of digital sounds by leveraging their intuitions for the acoustics of physical objects. The Sound of Touch permits real-time exploitation of the sonic properties of a physical environment, to achieve a rich and expressive control of digital sound that is not typically possible in electronic sound synthesis and control systems.

Based on Roberto Aimi’s methods for realtime percussion instruments. For a paper on The Sound of Touch, click here