VART3490 - Installation Art :: Final Installation

 

Today I performed the work at RMIT in building 37. The work was performed via Ableton Live through my Presonus Firebox soundcard with 6 outputs routed discretely to 4 speakers placed in each corner of the room and the subwoofer placed in the centre.

I placed the CRT monitors upon tripod stands used for ceramics, which added an industrial aesthetic I found pleasing. I performed the work for 10 minutes in the darkened room, using only the sounds and lighting from the CRT monitors to fill the space. I was able to pan the audio through the quadrophonic array to create spatial effects, moving the audio sourced from the ducts along from front left to back right via front right - directly representational of the airflow movement within the ducts of the site.

I used the electromagnetic recordings sourced from the computers primarilly on the front left and right speakers, also congruent to their sourced locations from the site. I used the lower frequency capture from the duct recordings to generate the sub tone, which was in turn routed to the right CRT monitor, creating horiztontal agreen bands that would cycle at its lower frequency rate, these bands moving slowly upward in time with the droning sub. During the performance I sent this channel more frequencies from the electromagnetic capture of low frequency tones I sourced from the lighting and power boards. This low hum modulated the frequencies from the duct, allowing me to adjust the pulsing rhythm of the sub tone and the bands of the right CRT monitor, generating purple and green lines with pulsing widths.

The left CRT displayed the higher frequencies from the left and right channels, creating a more chaotic pattern of horizontal red and blue bands that increased and decreased in width in congruence with the dense array of frequency bands it was receiving.

Performance setup in Ableton Live

Reflection: 

The response from the group was entirely positive, each being able to discern the sounds used as being captured from the space and presented in this context. Spatially and visually everyone was absorbed and engaged by the installation. There was an agreement that effect of the the multichannel array and the presentation of light via the CRT monitors was sucessful at creating immersion, which was the intention of the installation.

If I were to extend this work, I would remove the performative aspect from this and compose a looping sound work to present. Though the criteria of the assessment mentioned "performing the work" I feel that my presence in the installation conducting the performance was distracting for the audience and myself, and not entirely necessary to articulate the piece.

VART3490 - Installation Art :: Synchresis Experiments with VGA Audio Hacking

Synchresis - 

Synchresis is the forging between something one sees and something one hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an acronym formed by telescoping together the two words synchronism and synthesis.

- Michel Chion http://filmsound.org/chion/sync.htm
 Synchresis further reading: http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papers2005/p10.danielwilson.htm

I also intended to incorporate a visual element to represent the site, but this would be entirely emergent from the the performed audio - being the dominant mode of expression.

As I had initially intended to use a projector to display an abstract temporal construct of the lighting and/or electomagnetic elements of the space via timelapse or color during the installation - I came across a more conceptually congruent solution - a simple hack for computer monitors.

I had indentified my computer screens as the primary focal points of the site as being the key visual elements I wanted to represent in the installation, this hack served ideally to represent these screens in an abstract form - their displays entirely emergent from the performed audio - allowing my soundscape to illuminate the space via the audio frequencies being sent to the speakers.

VART3490 - Installation Art Site Recording

The most prounounced sonic characteristics of the space I wanted to incorporate were those that tonally represent my emotional state when using the space as a studio. Some of these are emergent of the architectural and mechanical elements of the space independant of the elements I bring to it.

These elements include the massive heating ducts that run along the ceiling, the electromagnetic noise present in the lighting and the muffled voices of my the owner and his wife above, all of which are very present in my thoughts when I am present in the space. Just these elements are sonically rich enough to warrant a composition in themselves.

I used my Zoom h4N recorder's onboard microphone to capture 2 long recordings from either end of the rooms heating ducts while they were operating. One of these recordings was conducted while the owner and his wife were having dinner with the intention of capturing their conversation filtered through the floor as part of the recording.

I was unimpressed with the recording as it didn't adaquately capture the ominous rumble of the heating duct as effectively as I required for the composition. I created a contact microphone using a piezo disc to attach to the metal of the duct as a method to electrically capture the vibrations across its surface.

I used Zach Poff's design for his LED limiter circuit to prevent the h4N from recieving voltage spikes from the piezo.

I made another one of these so that I could capture a stereo recording direct into the h4N, though for a quadrophonic composition I would need to split these channels into discreet mono channels.

I used a design I found on the web to create a balanced contact microphone from two piezo discs with common ground with their positive wires wired independently to the positive and negative pins on an xlr microphone plug. The result was much more sensitivity on in the higher frequency ranges complimenting the other larger contact mic I created quite well. With both mics plugged into the Left and Right channels on the H4n I was able to capture a much greater range of the frequency spectrum and split into bass and highs which is ideal for the compositional stage.

Creating the balanced piezo contact mic

 

Lower freq capture from larger piezo contact mic on R channel

Upper freq capture from balanced piezo contact mic on L channel 

I made several of these stereo recordings from different positions along the duct. In order to get a better sound I would have liked to have made this piezo preamp design. The impedance mismatch in the simple DIY contact mic design creates a high pass filter which produces the scratchy, lifeless sound that is usually associated with contact mics. Unfortunately within the time allotted it was not practical to craft this preamp. What is practical is to address this in the compositional stage by supplying the missing bass frequencies through synthesis.

I also wanted to incorporate the electromagnetic and acoustic elements that I bring to the space. These consist of  a range of electrical devices I use within it. I used a pair of transducers to capture the electromagnetic signals being emitted from the key elements of the space I intended to represent in the final installation. These include the fluro light fittings, my laptop and external LCD screen, the power boards and wall outlets, my media centre (nintendo wii) and desk lamp.

Using only a palette of the above recordings I will use the compositional process to articulate my own representation of this workspace as an temporal amalgam of emergent acoustic markers and abstracted contextual sonic symbols. The composition intends purely to depict my conceptual respresentation of the space. As the composition will be abstracted, the literal elements are purely tools to work with in this process. The intention of the piece is to immerse those within the exhibition space into my mental state whilst working in my workroom through sonic and visual cues.

VART3489 - Score and Sound Design Project 1

 

Project 1: Sound & Vision Exercise (15%) + Reflection (10%) Due week 4 (August 12)

Create a work which explores audiovisual relationships in an interesting way.

Select a video work from the shared folder on the SD computer to score/SD.

Reflection:

Selected this piece as it matched my sound palette best. Big reeses and granular with glitchy distortions interrupting the movement in the darkness. First attempt at scoring a piece, discovered the process is even more akin to painting than my usual compositional process. Cherry picking events in the piece as points to build around filling the detail outwardly between points. Rewarding definitely. 90% of the source material created from my own sound library. I used some kicks from a pack while sketching that worked instantly, so I rolled with them. If the project required me to use strictly my own sample library I could have synthesised these sounds pretty easily. Same goes for the 2 field recordings I used from a pack. I could have gone to the kitchen with my h4N if needed.

I used Ableton 9 to compose, using 37 channels of audio, a single reverb send/return, barely any compression or insert effects, filtering or EQ. I relied primarily on the more effective tools of volume, panning and layered arrangement. I find working using the approach infintely more effective with this many channels of audio. To create some of the movement in the later section I layered a fast LFO on a bandpass filter unsynced to tempo, I set the rate by altering it while watching the video. I definitely could have achieved a cleaner tighter mix with more diligence - but I really wanted to avoid mix purgatory for this task and move quickly through the process.

While mixing I had some of the tonal non foley elements soloed and found taking all of the foley out of the mix actually really compelling. I could have built on this and taken this piece in an entirely different direction, this more subtle tone would have also been entirely suitable. This "less is more" mentality would have made this ~24 second piece feel more like a short film than a drum and bass/videogame trailer. More expression is required for a more subtle approach, though I thoroughly enjoyed the engineering aspect of building foley for abstract forms.

http://www.soundcloud.com/lysdexic
http://www.facebook.com/lysdex
http://www.twitter.com/lysdexic_

VART3490 - Installation Art :: "Site Assessment"

RMIT SCHOOL OF ART

Installation Art
Semester Two 2014

Installation Art

In the light of the issues sighted in the introduction to
SPACES FOR INSTALLATION
consider this starting point; an objective of a personal space.

PROJECT ONE: A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

. Under take a detailed objective examination of your bedroom / space.
. The research should include the following (as in a forensic report): the dimensions of    the room, the orientation of the room as to the rest of the building, contents of the room, the location of the contents, architectural details of the room.

. Make a series of schematic drawings of the room: plan view, side elevation etc.
. Use further drawings and photography to visually document the room and its contents.

. What are some of the sensory aspects and functions of the room, e.g. sounds, smells, textures, activities etc.

. Once you have exhausted the objective analysis of the room list some subjective responses to/ of the space.

. Through these lists, drawings, photographs etc, make a simple scale model of the room, schematically blocking in the main forms (furniture etc).

. With all this information consider translating the room’s existence into another place i.e. the Life Room. Think of this process as ‘ performing the room’ for the rest of the group.

. This could start out with you physically marking out the plan dimensions of your room with masking tape or some other material, and you as a guide to activate the bedroom’s identity. Installation as a Live Art event.

. Work will another person to document the ‘performative installation’ Photography? Video? Duration: 10 minutes.

Slitscan Photography

Originally used in static photography to achieve blurriness or deformity, the slit-scan technique was perfected for the creation of spectacular animations. It enables the cinematographer to create a psychedelic flow of colors. Though this type of effect is now often created through computer animation, slit-scan is a mechanical technique. It was adapted for film by Douglas Trumbull during the production of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and used extensively in the "star child" sequence. It requires an imposing machine, capable of moving the camera and its support. This type of effect was revived in other productions, for films and television alike. For instance, slit-scan was used by Bernard Lodge to create the Doctor Who title sequences for Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker used between December 1973 and January 1980. Slit-scan was also used in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) to create the "stretching" of the starship Enterprise-D when it engaged warp drive. Due to the expense and difficulty of this technique, the same three warp-entry shots, all created by Industrial Light and Magic for the series pilot, were reused throughout the series virtually every time the ship went into warp.


Slitscan Video

You can make your own slit camera out of any video capable digital camera with a regular sensor and a regular lens. All you need to do is the following:

1. record a video of your action
2. extract each frame as an individual image (the opposite to what you would do for a time lapse)
3. extract a vertical single pixel wide line from each image (for example a line from the center)
4. stack those lines horizontally from left to right to form an actual "slit scan" image

This can be automated by tools like e.g. ImageMagick and the longer your initial video was, the wider your image will be. In fact, the width of your slit scan image will have exactly the same amount of pixels as your initial video's frame number.

Now, to go one step further you can proceed for all the other vertical lines of your images and create one slit scan image for each particular set of vertical lines. This will give you a set of as many slit scan images as your initial video was wide in pixels. Combining that set of slit scan images to a video (this time exactly as in a time lapse) your result can look like this.

Important note:

I decided to abandon the slitscan method in order to focus on sound as the primary medium for this work. Delving into the slitscan technique is too tangental to be practical for my development as a sound artist. I chose instead to use this assignment to focus on developing audio capture skills and multimedia electronics which have been the focus of my installation work in the past.

VART3504 - Instructional Piece

Instructional Piece

Possible:
Draw a square on the ground, then inscribe a circle within it.
Take a piece of paper, tear it into equal pieces - one for each person in the room.
Distribute these to each person.
Individually compress each piece to the smallest size possible.
Individually drop each piece over the square.
Count the number of objects inside the circle.
Multiply this by the total number of objects.
Write this result in the centre of the circle.

Impossible:
Divide the result by zero.

Inscribed circle within square

Based loosely on the (Monte Carlo Method) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

Monte Carlo methods vary, but tend to follow a particular pattern:

1. Define a domain of possible inputs.
2. Generate inputs randomly from a probability distribution over the domain.
3. Perform a deterministic computation on the inputs.
4. Aggregate the results.

Division by zero:
Why can't we divide by zero?

VART3509 - FLVNEUR Installation Notes

FLVNEUR, RMIT Building 50 Window Gallery, 2014

Flash Video is currently the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. The FLV video file format made popular by new sites like Reuters.com and YouTube represent the lens with which we view the modern world. More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month, 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth.

The web is a populated space where one may interact, or silently observe the landscape. In the digital age the Flâneur inhabits the digital space as well as the physical, strolling through immense communities of user generated content - each, a as self proclaimed connoisseur of media.

FLVNEUR recreates the journey of the artist in the act of urban exploration in 2014. Using multimedia artifacts collected in this journey, FLVNEUR is presented in an engaging abstract, minimalist audio/visual interpretation of the aforementioned journey. Streaming live via YouTube and displayed on a digital screen installed in the RMIT Building 50 Window Gallery, FLVNEUR places this key concept at street level, occupying both the digital space and the physical - accessible to both the urban and the digital idle observer.

Materials:

LCD Screen

Macbook, Browser software running custom script, Wifi Connection

Glass window acoustic transducers

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2441469/Fruit-bowl-Hi-Fi-Bizarre-glass-Timbre-speakers-promise-make-ANY-surface-musical.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTePIwjdX8c

http://www.instructables.com/id/Glass-Speakers/step3/Mark-and-cut/

http://www.soliddrive.com/index.php/faq/

http://shopus.mightydwarf.com/c/mighty-dwarf-speakers

http://www.core77.com/blog/consumer_product/wireless_resonating_speakers_turn_any_flat_surface_into_your_neighbors_worst_nightmare_23718.asp

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/96749

http://www.glass-speaker.com/index.php?id=68

http://blog.feonic.com/2013/plexiglass-audiovisual-art-installation/

VART3457 - Experimental Practice [Patching Ideas]

From researching Wendy Carlos:

The Harmonic Scale:
 

is a "Super-Just" musical scale allowing extended just intonation, beyond 5-limit to the 19th harmonic ( Play (help·info)), and free modulation through the use of synthesizers. It includes 144 (=12×12) notes per octave and two circles of fifths.^[a] Transpositions and tuning tables are controlled by left-hand on the appropriate note on a one-octave keyboard.^[1]
For example, if the harmonic scale is tuned to a fundamental of C then C is also the 16th and 32nd harmonics, C♯ is the 17th ( Play (help·info)), D the 18th ( Play (help·info)), E♭ the 19th ( Play (help·info)), E♮ the 20th ( Play (help·info)), F the 21st (a natural seventh above G, but not a great interval above C) ( Play (help·info)), F♯ the 22nd ( Play (help·info)), G the 24th ( Play (help·info)), A♭ the 26th ( Play (help·info)), A♮ the 27th (a just fifth above D) ( Play (help·info)), B♭ the 28th ( Play (help·info)), B♮ the 30th ( Play (help·info)), and some harmonics are not included.^[1]  Play diatonic scale (help·info)

The Alpha Scale:

The α (alpha) scale is a non-octave-repeating musical scale. In one version it splits the perfect fifth (3:2) into nine equal parts of approximately 78.0 cents.^{[citation needed]} In another it splits the minor third into two equal parts,^[1] or four equal parts of approximately 78 cents each^[2]  Play (help·info). At 78 cents per step, this totals approximately 15.385 steps per octave. The scale step may be precisely derived from using 9:5  Play (help·info) to approximate the interval 3:2/5:4,^[3] which equals 6:5  Play (help·info).
It was invented by Wendy Carlos and used on her album Beauty in the Beast (1986).
Though it does not have an octave, the alpha scale produces, "wonderful triads," ( Play major (help·info) and  minor triad (help·info)) and the beta scale has similar properties but the sevenths are more in tune.^[1] However, the alpha scale has, "excellent harmonic seventh chords...using the inversion of 7/4, i.e., 8/7."^[4]  Play (help·info) More accurately the alpha scale step is 77.965 cents and there are 15.3915 per octave.^[3][5]

The Beta Scale:

The β (beta) scale is a non-octave-repeating musical scale. In one version, it splits the perfect fifth (3/2) into eleven equal parts of 63.8 cents each.^{[citation needed]} Another interpretation splits the perfect fourth into two equal parts,^[1] or eight equal parts of approximately 64 cents each^[2]  Play (help·info). At 64 cents per step, this totals approximately 18.75 steps per octave. It may be derived from using 11:6  Play (help·info) to approximate the interval 3:2/5:4,^[3] which equals 6:5  Play (help·info).
It was invented by and is a signature of Wendy Carlos and used on her album Beauty in the Beast (1986).
Although neither has an octave, one advantage to the beta scale over the alpha scale is that 15 steps, 957.494 cents,  Play (help·info) is a reasonable approximation to the seventh harmonic (7:4, 968.826 cents)^[3][4]  Play (help·info) though both have nice triads^[1] ( Play major triad (help·info),  minor triad (help·info), and  dominant seventh (help·info)).
The delta scale may be regarded as the beta scale's reciprocal since it is, "as far 'down' the (0 3 6 9) circle from α as β is 'up.'"^[5]

The Gamma Scale:

The γ (gamma) scale is a non-octave repeating musical scale. In one interpretation, it splits the perfect fifth into 20 equal parts of 35.1 cents each.^{[citation needed]} In another, it splits the neutral third into two equal parts, or ten equal parts of approximately 35.1 cents each^[1]  Play (help·info). At 35.1 cents per step this totals 34.188 steps per octave.^[1]
It may be derived from using 20:11  Play (help·info) to approximate the interval 3:2/5:4,^[2] which equals 6:5  Play (help·info).
It was invented by Wendy Carlos. "It produces nearly perfect triads."^[3] "A 'third flavor,' sort of intermediate to 'alpha' and 'beta', although a melodic diatonic scale is easily available."^[1]
More accurately the gamma scale step is 35.099 cents and there are 34.1895 per octave.^[2]

The Bohlen-Pierce Scale:

The Bohlen–Pierce scale (BP scale) is a musical scale that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Western and other musics,^[1] specifically the equal tempered diatonic scale. Compared with octave-repeating scales, its intervals are more consonant with certain types of acoustic spectra. It was independently described by Heinz Bohlen,^[2] Kees van Prooijen^[3] and John R. Pierce. Pierce, who, with Max Mathews and others, published his discovery in 1984,^[4] renamed the Pierce 3579b scale and its chromatic variant the Bohlen–Pierce scale after learning of Bohlen's earlier publication. Bohlen had proposed the same scale based on consideration of the influence of combination tones on the Gestalt impression of intervals and chords.^[5]
The intervals between BP scale pitch classes are based on odd integer frequency ratios, in contrast with the intervals in diatonic scales, which employ both odd and even ratios found in the harmonic series. Specifically, the BP scale steps are based on ratios of integers whose factors are 3, 5, and 7. Thus the scale contains consonant harmonies based on the odd harmonic overtones 3/5/7/9 ( play (help·info)). The chord formed by the ratio 3:5:7 ( play (help·info)) serves much the same role as the 4:5:6 chord (a major triad  play (help·info)) does in diatonic scales (3:5:7 = 1:1.66:2.33 and 4:5:6 = 2:2.5:3 = 1:1.25:1.5).

From WendyCarlos.com:

Almost all historical work on multiple divisions of the octave in tuning theory has focused on whole number integer divisions. That assures us that after the particular number of notes of a particular division is added together, we arrive at a note exactly one octave (frequency ratio 2:1) away from the pitch at which we started. The so-called equally tempered scale is one of these divisions, as are all the important tunings based on 19, 31, and 53 equal steps. This notion has been around for so long that it almost sounds impertinent to suggest there might be a useful alternative which has been systematically ignored.

Notice that each of these historical divisions is symmetrically laid-out: you will find the prime ratio of the perfect fifth, 3/2, and also the perfect fourth, 4/3. But once you have 2/1 (the perfect octave) and 3/2, the ratio of 4/3 follows directly. It's not prime like the other two ratios, but embedded in their combination. Similarly in the past you find the major third, 5/4, but also its inversion, the minor sixth, 8/5. And both 6/5 and 5/3 appear.

Since each of the redundant interval pairs is symmetric with respect to the octave, the result is a kind of "over-representation" of this interval. But the octave is a ratio most common to the "strategies" of many instruments, including newer synthesizer architectures. Look at their 16', 8', 4' octaving borrowed from the pipe organ. Most timbres/instrument voices include a similar designation of transpositions up or down by octaves. We have octave possibilities all over the place.

So why not, as an experiment, investigate divisions which are not integer based, but allow fractional parts? That will lose all octave symmetry, but if we handle the octaving later, we might be able to find some really interesting equal-step specimens. Several years ago I wrote a computer program to perform a precise deep-search investigation into this kind of Asymmetric Division, based on the target ratios of: 3/2, 5/4, 6/5, 7/4, and 11/8. Here's what it discovered.

Between 10-40 equal steps per octave only three divisions exist which are amazingly more consonant than any other values around the, like lush tropical islands scattered in a great ocean of uniform chaos. I call them Alpha ('alpha'), Beta ('beta'), and Gamma ('gamma'). These happy discoveries occur at:

• 'alpha' = 78.0 cents/step = 15.385 steps/octave,
• 'beta' = 63.8 cents/step = 18.809 steps/octave,
• 'gamma' = 35.1 cents/step = 34.188 steps/octave.

If you try to play through a one octave scale of Alpha, you'd find there are 4 steps to the minor third, 5 steps to the major third, and 9 steps to the perfect (no kidding) fifth, but, or course, no octave. The closest "attempt" at this is an awful 1170 cent version, which sounds awfully flat. Yet the next step to 1248 cents is even further away, and hopelessly sharp, except for timbres like those in a gamelan ensemble. But that's the trade-off we've requested, and there's no free lunch! Try some harmonies and you'll find they're amazingly pure. The melodic motions of Alpha are amazingly exotic and fresh, like you've never heard before. This is a scale well worth exploring.

Beta is very like Alpha in its harmonies, but with 5 steps to the minor third, 6 to the major third, and 11 to the perfect fifth, melodic motions are different, rather more diatonic in effect than Alpha. That's not so surprising, since this scale is very close in its intervals to the 19 2 Symmetric division, which theorists from Yasser on have praised as a good direction to take eventually as a new diatonic alternative for Western music. But Beta sounds even better than 19-step Equal, which is troubled by a fairly flat major third of less than 379 cents, which sounds rather anemic to our ears, brought up as we are in a very sharp major third world of E.T. Melodically it's quite impossible to hear much difference between Beta and 19-tone Equal. So Beta is suited for more standard types of music which might benefit from the nearly perfect harmonies. Beta also lacks the excellent harmonic seventh chords which can be found in Alpha by using the inversion of 7/4, i.e., 8/7, a fact which I first had overlooked when I first discovered Alpha, and a big reason why Alpha is one of my favorite alternative tunings.

You can manage on the standard keyboard design, sort of, to try experimenting with both Alpha and Beta, by retuning two physical octaves for each acoustic octave. This trick also is an easy way to get octaves back in, if the pure octaves are located each physical two octaves apart on a standard keyboard controller. Other kinds of controllers, like wind controllers, could cope with the problem in much the same way. It then gives a means for notating what keys to play, which is important. Just use standard notation for the physical notes, not the sounds (I have no idea how to notate the sounds yet...).

But Gamma really requires a "Multiphonic" Generalized Keyboard, like most >24 divisions, as it simply has, like the joke in the film, Amadeus, "too many notes." Note that Gamma (9 steps - 11 steps - 20 steps) is also slightly smoother than Alpha or Beta, having no palpable difference from Just tuning in harmonies, which is saying a lot. You really have to go further, up to 53-step E.T., to find another nearly perfect equal division, yet Gamma is noticeably freer of beats than even that venerable tuning. Why was it overlooked for so long? You guessed it, it's not symmetrical about the octave, and so was excluded a priori from everybody's search. Gamma's scale is yet a "third flavor," sort of intermediate to 'alpha' and 'beta', although a melodic diatonic scale is easily available. I have searched but can find no previous description of 'alpha', 'beta' or 'gamma' nor their Asymmetric scale-family in any of the literature.

Alpha has a musically interesting property not found in Western music: it splits the minor third exactly in half (also into quarters). This is what initially led me to look for it, and I merely called it my "split minor 3rd scale of 78-cents-steps." Beta, like the Symmetric 19 division, does the same thing to the perfect fourth. This whole formal discovery came a few weeks after I had completed the album, Beauty in the Beast, which is wholly in new tunings and timbres. The title cut from the album contains an extended study of some 'beta', but is mostly in 'alpha'. I expect to work more with both in the near future, and eventually (with the right hardware) with Gamma as well. Any curious souls out there are invited to try their own hand, too. these are not just theoretical speculations we're talking about here. The sound and the music that results is what counts, and the territory is virgin and ripe with gorgeous possibilities. Happy harvesting.

 

HUSO2213: Public Domain: Catalogue Essay

PUBLIC DOMAIN: DIGITAL APPROPRIATION OF THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

CATALOGUE ESSAY

JAY CURTIS, OCTOBER 2013

“The specific function of modern didactic art has been to show that art does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment.” (Burnham, 1968)

If the 20th Century was defined by the Megalopolis, the 21st will be defined by the data that passes within it. At the dawn of the new millenium, digital information technology had only barely evolved to be a capable, meaningful element of urban life. When the sun sets in the final moments of the 21st Century, the line between physical and digital will be have been long since incomprehensibly blurred. It is not by chance that the emergence of street art is in parallel with the evolution of these systems. The city is the physical organ for the growth and proliferation of information. Be it by pen, bytes or spray can, wielded by urchin or academic, the public space is a petri dish for knowledge.

Public Domain illustrates these concepts in both form and function. Utilizing the public space of Federation Square in the Melbourne CBD, the exhibition itself is illustrative of the metanarrative of urban artwork, freely accessible to foot traffic and running from morning through night. The boundaries between these expressions of contemporary Urban art practise and the gallery space are removed as much as logistically plausible, with all artwork referencing the 21st Century crossover point where the lines between the digital and physical are becoming less clear.

In the algorithmic distortions of Clement Valla’s The Universal Texture, the imperfections of the omnipotent eye of Google Earth are laid bare and we see the perfect representation of the modern 21st Century landscape. Rigid manmade structures bend and droop, highway bridges sag as if Dali’s The Persistence of Memory had somehow been captured with a digital SLR. Impossibly flat cities extend out to the horizon across the incorrectly contoured plane, bending and twisting we see our world as a quilt stretched to fit over a mismatched topography. The public space is subject matter of all of these images, The Universal Texture renders the disparity between physical and digital before our eyes.
                                                                                                                                                                   

The exploration of the themes of physicality in the urban landscape have been the obsession of Belgian artist David Mesguich for over 10 years. In previous works such as Crosswords he painstakingly recreated a street landscape from Downtown Manhattan as a wall mounted paper sculpture in miniature, for the purpose of “questionning (sic) the place of the truth in produced images today.” (Mesguich 2008) His sculptural work since has continued to develop this with larger and larger abstracted vector forms and displaying them in public spaces.  Folds, his collaboration piece with painter Valentin Van der Meulen  on display at Public Domain is a 3 metre wide wall mounted sculpture of a skull emerging between two faces constructed from flat vectors of polypropylène. Mesguich’s work is an exercise in bringing these digital 3D modeled forms into the physical world and deploying them in the urban landscape. His work appears almost architectural, his sculptures appearing to emerge organically from their man made surroundings animating it with bold, abstracted facial features. Face perception provides a wealth of information that facilitates social interaction. (Haxby, Hoffman, Gobbini 2002) Due to our predilection for human faces, Mesguich’s work engages our minds in a subliminal dialogue. We apply human characteristics to the urban landscape from which his sculptures emerge, making the inorganic textures of the manmade environment human, through the artifice of digital tools.

Graffiti is irrefutably the foundational element of the Urban Art movement. Synonymous with urbanity for nearly 30 years, the tenets Graffiti art encapsulate the notion of Public space as a battleground where the mutable concepts of intellectual property, individualism & identity are fought. Brisbane artist Graffiti Technica has made his transgressions btween the physical and digital a key feature of his work. By taking fundamental aesthetic forms of modern Graffiti art into the digital realm and manipulating them into animated 3D objects, he has made a career out of contemporising Graffiti art in the 21st Century.

from Graffiti Technica.com, Why?

Why not spray paint?

There is a digital world out there. There are lot of electronic screens, i want to be apart of that world. I want to use the skills that I have acquired to do something different, graffiti to me is a style not an automatic choice of artistic medium. (Graffiti Technica 2009)

The fusion of Parkour and Network Hacking in the collaboration piece by British breaker duo Methods of Movement and London hacker collective Mediashed, The Duellists takes these entirely urban concepts and modernises them in beautifully fluid tangibility. In the spirit of Parkour’s less pretentious title “Free Running” - Mediashed’s information age nerd-anarchy concept of “Free Media” employs the same concept of harnessing and engaging nondestructively with the public space. The commandeering of unprotected wireless signals for the purposes of art is no different to using a bridge as a canvas or a shopping mall as an obstacle course. 

Issues of privacy, surveillance and data security have been at the forefront of ethical debate in the 21st Century. On the surface it may appear that the terrorist attacks of 9-11 may have catalysed the fears posed in Orwellian lore, but surveillance of Public spaces fall under the legislation of the Freedom of Information Act 1982, Public Records Act 1973, The Information Privacy Act 2000 and the Surveillance Devices Act 1999 which all predate this (Brouwer 2012). The Duellists challenge both the public and private enterprise to be confronted the rights of the individual within contemporary society in the digital age. Through the simple act of Free Running, the public is confronted with the consideration of the rights to their own image, identity and recorded copies of it and empowered with the knowledge that they are not passive members of a society but the citizens with the tools to reclaim their own image through freely accessible digital tools. The Duellists as a performance piece illustrates that the concepts of Free Running and Free Media subvert the old world dichotomy of Life and Art as parallel forces in flux and demonstrates that Life is Art.

Light painting takes the rigidity of Projection Mapping and makes it a guerrilla artform. The pioneering multimedia performance work of Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw’s Sweatshoppe uses green LEDs housed inside a paint roller to control the throw boundaries of a nearby projector using a camera to track movement and custom software to perform the operations in realtime. The duo roll up in a van housing the equipment, one leaps out and “paints” the wall with the video feed from the projector covering entire walls with garish Pop art style moving images until the door slams shut and the pair zoom to their next location. The possibilities opened by Sweatshoppe are unique and profound in the context of contemporary urban art. Light Painting not only removes the problematic element of vandalism, but liberates Urban art from the shackles of the static image through digital technology. Finally, visual artists working within the disciplines of street art, graffiti and their related fields are able to move beyond the static limitations of one singular frame. Animated forms can now exist in a live, improvised performative context. The lifelessness of prerecorded antecedent forms of animated Urban artwork bound to immobile projector, CRT, LCD or Plasma screens are a thing of the past. 

Sweatshoppe presents an exciting glimpse into the future of life within the 21st Century, where every surface is a multimedia canvas. The accessibility of this technology is the death knell of the advertising hegemony that controls moving images in the public space. Advertising executives are no longer the gatekeepers of multimedia billboards, a privilege afforded only to corporations with a daily advertising budget that exceeds monthly minimum wage. The ceaseless miniaturization and improved affordability of technology has rendered us with pocket sized projectors and high resolution cameras housed within our smartphones, these portable media drives capable of the computations required to light paint, record the output and stream live to everywhere in the world. This technology costs about 2 weeks wage and can now exist in two pockets of an overcoat. The implications of this cannot be overstated.

Each of these works are a commentary on the juncture between contemporary urban life and the immersive digital age. From the extruded vector forms of David Mesguich and Valentin Van der Meulen’s wall mounted sculpture Folds, to the unconventional abstracted use of depth in the hanging of Clement Valla’s The Universal Texture; the imposition of 3D rendered graffiti forms into filmed locations by Brisbane artist Graffiti Technica or the hacked CCTV captured performances in The Duellists, or live projection based light painting of Sweatshoppe all of the artworks exhibited at Public Domain break the fourth wall and encourage us to step through it, so that we may continue to celebrate and  fight for our own place within the Public Domain.

Bibliography: 

Burnham, J 1968, “Systems Esthetics”, Artforum Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 30-35, viewed 26 October 2013. 

CROSSWORDS. 2008. CROSSWORDS. Available at: http://www.davidmesguich.com/79131/316210/work/crosswords. viewed 27 October 2013.

Haxby, James V., Elizabeth A. Hoffman, and M. Ida Gobbini. "Human neural systems for face recognition and social communication." Biological psychiatry 51.1 (2002): 59-67.

Graffiti Technica - 3d Graffiti electronic art tagging and mechanical goodness why. 2009. Graffiti Technica - 3d Graffiti electronic art tagging and mechanical goodness why. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.graffititechnica.com/why.html. viewed 28 October 2013

Brouwer, G.E 2012, Victorian Ombudsman’s Guidelines for developing Closed Circuit Television policies for Victorian Public Sector, pp. 9, Available at: http://www.ombudsman.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/Guidelines_for_establishing_Closed_Circuit_Television_in_public_places_-_Final.pdf viewed 29 October 2013

Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary Documents. 2013. Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary Documents. Available at: http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au. viewed 29 October 2013