http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ

As well as being technically cool, the project is yet another sign of the increasing cultural prominence of data as both material and idea - in that sense, after Design and the Elastic Mind and Wired’s “Petabyte Age“, this is more of the same. But it’s also something different, it seems to me. Like any other visualisation, House of Cards doesn’t only use data, it presents a certain sense of what data is, means, and (crucially) feels like; and this is where it’s different. The dominant narrative of data visualisation at the moment is informed by the networked optimism of web 2.0, where the social sphere, and increasingly the world as a whole, is unproblematically digitised; where more is more and truth, beauty, and commercial success all are immanent in the teeming datacloud.

House of Cards, by contrast, is a manifestation of data melancholy. Data here is low res, with a sketchy looseness of detail that evokes the gaps, the un-sampled points. This data is also abject or corrupt, the scanner intentionally jammed with reflective material, a bit like the metallic chaff used to confuse missile guidance systems. These glitches are familiar devices in electronic music and video, including Kid A-era Radiohead. However here the errors are very much in the data; they have migrated out of the music, which is human, organic and more or less intact here. This disjunction between failed data and the emotional, human domain is what characterises the data melancholy; it’s illustrated beautifully at the end of House of Cards, with the “party scene” (one of Thom Yorke’s ideas for the clip), a social scene decimated into abstract clouds of points. This theme also resonates across In Rainbows, especially in the closing track, Videotape: “this is one for the good days / and I have it all here, in red blue green.” Here image data is again a sort of failed trace of an emotional reality, all that remains of “the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.”

Yorke’s other motif for House of Cards was “vaporisation,” which is clear enough in the clip; I think its most effective in the final shots of the house; the earlier clips of Yorke disintegrating seem a bit langurous, with that undulating look of Perlin noise (is it, anyone?). The house shot in particular reminded me of Brandon Morse’s Preparing for the Inevitable; Morse’s work in general has a related feel about it, though the models seem t be synthesised rather than sampled. Again the poetics is one of cool, digital melancholy, where tragedy is stripped down to a set of vectors and forces (above: Collapse, from Flickr). Here though, rather than a failure of data (sampled representation) it’s a failure of the procedural model, or perhaps failure with, or in, the model. [posted by Mitchell Whitelaw on The Teeming Void]

Natural magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries as scientists from NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory excitedly describe their discoveries.

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries. All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons. Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries. All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons. Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries. All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons. Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

Animated photographs, using sound-controlled CGI and 3D compositing. [via]

The music predates the modern analog synthesizers of the late 60’s & early 70’s, as the sound sources are a combination of generated sound and tape manipulation. The score is based on a timeline measured in seconds, using shapes & colors instead of notes on a staff. Dots represent impulses & combs for noise. Colors stand for variations in timbre & pitch.

The resulting movie can also be seen here.

Thanks to information aesthetics.

“Local school kids are taking it a step further and are deliberately shouting at the sign in unison in order to make the numbers change. The Manager of the night club is finding the poster helpful too – he is taking photos of the sign in the early hours of the morning to show the local council that he is not making too much noise.” [From information aesthetics]

Reversing the information flow in the opposite direction we find André Gonçalves ongoing Untitled #06 project, which also utilises the turntable, this time with a servomotor attached to the needle cartridge. Sound captured from a microphone is processed, then digitised into data and used by the servo to move the cartridge accordingly. The cartridge, which has an Indian ink pen attached, draws the audio events in real-time. The resultant visualisations have semi uniform spirgraphic geometries, and as André says ‘the drawings can be seen as histograms of the audio activity of a space during a certain period of time. In his biography André describes himself as an ‘empathy programmer with googlian self-education’, something many of us with an autodidactic learning will identify with.

Finally, it would be interesting to hear what one of André’s Untitled #06 disc visualisations, if drawn in graphite, would sound like on Caleb’s Graphic Music Sequencer. [posted by Paul on Dataisnature]

SIGNAL is a Raster-Noton supergroup, featuring Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto), Olaf Bender (aka Byetone), and Frank Bretschneider. The trio performs intense, hypnotic music to a spectacular backdrop of graphical information that reveals the complex geometry of the sounds in play. Most of their sound sources are taken from a huge memory bank of music from long jamming sessions dating from the earlydays of Raster-Noton. These are processed and folded into a taut and energetic web of rhythmic clicks, bristling static, and deep bass pulses that are unexpectedly sensuous and undeniably funky. Their most recent album, Robotron, was released in 2007 on Raster-Noton. This will be SIGNAL’s Boston debut.

mp3 of Signal, Robotron: http://www.raster-noton.net/download/rn-69_robotron/02_Ermafa.mp3

Video of Signal Live in Copenhagen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2kyrrtVy_c

Musician and visual artist CARSTEN NICOLAI (aka ALVA NOTO) works in the transitional area between art and science. In his intensely dynamic work, Nicolai plays with the rules of physicality. Clicks and glitches are not used as ornamental additions, but make up the essential elements of the work, which is often structured around the rhythmic grooves of hip-hop and R&B. Nicolai has performed in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including The Guggenheim, MOMA SF, MOMA Oxford, NTT Tokyo, Tate Modern, and Venice Biennial. His latest album, unitxt, will be out this summer on Raster-Noton.This will be Nicolai’s Boston debut. Website: http://www.alvanoto.com

FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER is a founding member of Raster-Noton and one of the pioneering figures in ultra minimal post techno. Using the most basic sound sources (sine waves and white noise), Bretschneider creates minimal, flowing pieces with delicate textures and complex rhythmic patterns. Described as “abstract analogue pointilism,” “ambience for spaceports,” and “hypnotic echochamber pulsebeat,” Bretschneider’s subtle and detailed music is echoed by his visuals: perfect translations of the qualities found in music into visual phenomena. His most recent album, Rhythm, was named one of The Wire magazine’s Top 50 Records of 2007. Website: http://www.frankbretschneider.de

Video of Frank Bretschneider Live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rb9IGRaOF4&feature=related

OLAF BENDER (aka BYETONE) is a founding member of the Raster-Noton label, as well as its lead designer. Bender creates his music digitally, assembling sine tones into complex sound fabrics of deep sub-bass and rhythmic clicks and crackles. He creates abstract animations to support his abstract music transforming the rhythm of the music into
a graphic equivalent, which he controls in real time. His new album, D.O.A.T. (Death of a Typographer), is due out this summer on Raster-Noton.

mp3 of Olaf Bender, “Plastic Star”: http://www.raster-noton.net/download/rn-81_plasticstar/plasticstar_original.mp3

Links:
Raster-Noton: http://www.raster-noton.de
Basstown: http://basstown.blogspot.com/
Goethe-Institut Boston: http://www.goethe.de/boston
LEF Foundation: http://www.lef-foundation.org/
Non-Event concerts are supported in part by a grant from the LEF Foundation.

Imagery: I am interested in expressing how we humans have parasitic tendencies. In one hand we create but in the other we consume and create voids. I am particularly interested in playing with the expression “milking the cash cow” by literally having the instrument sap colours out of currencies (notes/bills). I have selected a series of currencies from nations that celebrate their abundance of certain natural resources and manpower. Its interesting to observe how countries create a reference to their “cash cow” via currencies. And in particular one sees patterns of representation through iconography- such as farmers, tractors, cash crops, chimneys, industrial sheds, mineral deposits, mines etc, all of which serve as mastheads of development for emerging economies.

In the globalized landscape such countries see themselves as offshore providers of resources to larger and richer countries. It is amusing that emerging economies are in ways the cash cow for richer nations who often sift for foreign resources before they begun to consume their own as an act of self-preservation or find it cheaper to do so in their neo-imperialistic spirit. It is this vicious underrepresented portrait of national interests vs vested interests that I want to express through this instrument and performance. To me it is important to represent the consumed and less the consumer and so the selection only includes currencies of developing economies.

Udder in use
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtBahNEohQg

The screen component for the performance reacted to the instrument I built for the NIME class. For this I had to interface MAX/MSP to C++ via openFrameworks and OSC. The visual idea was to extract colours out of images and simultaneously erase them in the process. Image pixels were used to read colours and then the colours were mapped onto a stroke that was modulated depending on sensor values from the instrument. The speed with which the image lost colours depended on how the instrument was played (fast/slow) and on certain other parameters.

From his webste:

I graduated in Communication Design from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology located in Bangalore, India in 2004. I intend to pursue a creative practice where I would like to understand and deploy sociable media and context driven communication platforms. I am particularly inspired by the open source software movement and would like to combine some of its ethics into my creative practice. I dislike categorising my practice as either being Art or Design and prefer to simply call it creative practice, where I am learning to embrace creative sensibilities that arise from both, artistic as well as design thought processes and references. To me design and art is a way of thinking rather than doing.

My recent most exhibited work is titled ‘The Lowlands’ project, which explores alternative mapping practices in order to elicit unspoken and unseen territories in my sub-urban neighborhood of Bangalore. The Lowlands Project was exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in September 2005. I interpret this project as a stepping-stone towards understanding social spaces, geography, and locative media and technologies.

The effort may seem mundane or peculiar, or both, but it’s very much in the tradition of Lucier’s explorations of how enclosed spaces have their own intrinsic sonic properties, and of how sound degrades with successive reproductions.

One of the many great things about the Freesound site is that every sound object is complemented by a slew of data, including a visualization of the sound. Those images are reproduced below, with links to a compressed MP3 version of each iteration of the experiment. For a higher-resolution recording, click through to the given entry’s page. Each track is about 47 seconds long. Any descriptive text within quotation marks was supplied by the given file’s poster.

1. The original recording sounds as much like rain shower as it does a shower stall — it’s a gentle if insistent precipitation (MP3, page): “Mono recording of a shower running in a bathroom. Oktava MC-012 cardioid capsule straight to hardisk.” It was uploaded by Freesound contributor Hell’s Sound Guy.

All the subsequent mixes are by different Freesound regulars. I’m not sure that when Hell’s Sound Guy turned on his tape recorder he realized how many people were going to jump into his shower.

2. The second version has a much higher treble end, like water against a plastic sheet (MP3, page): “Second recording of the shower sound. This time played and recorded in an old stone house’s bathroom in Girona, Spain. Played through a couple of studio monitors and recorded with a minidisc and a stereo microphone on october 16th 2006.” It was posted by Freesounder LG.

3. The third is noisier still, more noise than water (MP3, page): “Second recording of the shower sound. This time played and recorded in an old stone house’s bathroom in Girona, Spain. Played through a couple of studio monitors and recorded with a minidisc and a stereo microphone on october 16th 2006.” Posted by bebops. (Bebops and LG may be the same person using different accounts.)

4. The fourth has a lulling quality (MP3, page): “Another recording in the shower-in-shower experiment. The bathroom this time is a very small 2 meters by 2 meters bathroom with a half-size bath tub. The recording of a recording of a recording of a recording of a shower.” It was posted by Bram — that’s Bram de Jong, founder of the Freesound website.

5. The above renditions of the shower are all part of the Freesound community’s “Remix! tree” (freesound.iua.upf.edu). There’s also a rendition, by morendaman, that doesn’t appear in the remix tree (MP3, page): “Part of the ’shower in the shower’ experiment. The 3rd re-recording. Recorded with an rode nt4.” The morendaman file’s title, which includes the phrase “broken speaker,” may explain the resulting music’s rusty, minimal-techno feel. [blogged on Disquiet]

According to the very limited information on the site, DNA, mRNA and Protein sequences are translated into MIDI to generate the sound and control the image variables in realtime. When presented in live performance a MIDI controller is used. The gene information and sequences are available here. Other audio samples are available here.

Gridjam will utilize Jack Ox and David Britton’s Virtual Color Organ™, visualizing Alvin Curran’s music performed by musicians located in four distant locales but connected via next generation networking technologies. The Virtual Color Organ™ (VCO) is a 3D immersive environment in which music is visually realized in colored and image-textured shapes as it is heard. The visualization remains as a 3D graphical sculpture after the performance. The colors, images, shapes and even the motions and placement of the visualized musical shapes are governed by artist-defined metaphoric relationships, created by hand as aesthetic and symbolic qualities rather than algorithmically. The VCO visually illustrates the information contained in the music’s score, the composer’s instructions to the musicians, and the musicians contributions to the score as they improvise in reaction to each other’s performances and to the immersive visual experience. Illustrative of synesthesia and intermedia, the VCO displays the emergent properties within the meaning of music, both as information and as art.

Ox created the original drawings of deserts in California and Arizona from which the Desert Organ Stop was modeled, commissioned Richard Rodriguez to model the landscape, and created the hand drawn texture maps appearing in the virtual reality world. The VCO is capable of having multiple visual organ stops. An organ stop on a traditional organ is a voice that affects the entire keyboard of notes. An organ stop in the VCO is the 3D immersive environment in which the visualized music will exist and also the visual vocabulary applied to the musical objects.

The 21st C. Virtual Color Organ™: The VCO is a computational system for translating musical compositions into visual performance. This interactive instrument consists of three basic parts:

1. A set of systems or syntax that provides transformations from a musical vocabulary to a visual one.

2. A 3D visual environment that serves as a performance space and the visual vocabulary from which the 3D environment was modeled. This visual vocabulary consists of landscape and/or architectural images and provides the objects on which the syntax acts.

3. A software environment that serves as the engine of interaction for the first two parts.

The VCO is capable of having multiple visual organ stops. An organ stop on a traditional organ is a voice that affects the entire keyboard of notes. An organ stop in the VCO is the 3D immersive environment in which the visualized music will exist and also the visual vocabulary applied to the musical objects. GridJam will take place in the black and white, hand drawn desert sand and rock structures coming from real deserts in California and Arizona. The original drawings by Ox, from which the 3D modeling was made, serve as the basic texture maps for all of the musical object.

The Music: by Alvin Curran

Curran has come up with a plan for the musical part of this project which is inspired both by the pure fundamental “synesthetic” goals of Ox’s visual structures as by the technical and theatrical nature of the domed projection spaces, the local accoustics and “global” nature of the work itself.

The music itself will be composed using a fluid mix of structured indeterminacy, synchronized composition, spontaneous music structures, and live electronic processing. But the essence of the music - whose goal is - to become interchangeable with the images is to create another set of “images” real and sonic, which is the music-theater itself. The L-Rail communicatioins will enable the complete synchronization of the dislocated music groups and their ability to react as if in the same room together.

The choice of instruments, will become another prime visual element embedded in the rich texts of Jacks desert and VR sound-objects. The music shall be performed by the Del Sol string quartet, Anthony Braxton on the saxophone, and Curran on the disklavier (playing sounds which have been modeled in MAYA by Ox over the last four years. These sounds will be subjected to processing device filters (by Tom Erbe/Sound Hack), e.g. granulators. The 3D objects will go into perpetual movement patterns that metaphorically represent the filters’ processing patterns.

The music (gestures and typologies) itself will range from almost inaudible sparse noises to discreet isolated tones to pulsing synchronous rhythms to clouds and walls of sound. characterizing the music throughout will be the presence of recorded (natural) sounds from animals, people and machines and phenomena from around the world (which however embedded in the texture, are at the source of the visual materials generated)… Midi information from the processing devices will also serve as real-time transformers of some aspects of the visual objects.

GridJam: The Visualization

The original building blocks of GridJam come from a list of almost 200 collected sounds belonging to Curran. The sound files include John Cage reciting short phrases, Maria Calas singing a high note, animal sounds, objects like coins being tossed, and various musical sounds etc. Ox put them through a Max program creating graphs of melody and dynamics. She sorted them into 8 groups based on these simple visualizations and made 3D models reflecting melody from the front and dynamics on the top of the object. There are eight groups because there are eight landscape texture maps. Each object in a group has as the base of the texture map the same hand drawn landscape picture. The colors and materials are based on the timbre of each specific sound sample. These colors can be rather complicated gradients, often in layers. If the sound sample has a sequence of vowel sounds then the colors in the gradient will show these based on Ox’s color system, which defines how and where vowels are made in the vocal track. Other timbre colors come from the extensive list of timbre created by Ox.

The 3D objects made by Ox from Curran’s collected sound files will be able to appear in small bits of the whole, based on the duration of the played sound. If the Disklavier key remains depressed for longer than the actual sound file, the object will begin to appear for a second time, moving along the time line. The time line follows a path from the center of the virtual desert out, until it curves up and back towards the center. .Before reaching the center it will curve up again and move outward once more, repeating this pattern for as many times as necessary in order to accommodate the playing. Because of this path, time will move both horizontally and vertically.

At the end of the performance the visualization will remain and can be more thoroughly inspected as a place with moving objects in a black and white desert environment. We will also have recorded the entire multimedia experience so that it can be played back in digital environments, such as the ever more ubiquitous digital planetarium theaters.