“first aid for urban spaces”

Andrem Shoban founded Greyworld in 1993 in Paris, then 2 years later they went back to London where they still have their studio. They do interactive urban art for the “people who buy cans of beans,” not for the elite. Their installations try to involve the public as much as possible. In 2002, they created the ColourStops installation for five bus stops in Bradford, UK: in the bus stop shelters, Greyworld concealed color-recognition cameras that create sounds according to the colours they detect. The work tries to reflect back the variety of differences in people, Bradford being a very multi-ethnic city.

Three years ago, on the Millennium Footbridge in Dublin, they inserted sensors in the carpet covering the bridge to detect the size of feet, and the speed of your walk; according to these data, different sounds are generated so that you can walk to the sound of music or hear the sound of crunchy leaves or snow or the flop flop of water.
Continue reading

the radio voice

This carries on from the earlier post, more on radio’s history, #1.

Marconi?s receivers could pick up morse code ? but not the continuous oscillations of the human voice. It was Reginald Fessiden and Lee De Forest who developed the possibilities of continuous wave transmission that would make voice communication possible.

Fessenden, in partnership with Swedish engineer, Ernst F.W. Alexanderson, then working for GE, designed an alternator, a “critical breakthrough in radio technology and elegant evidence of Fessenden’s genius in synthesizing his previous work in the electric power industry with his need for a transmitter” (Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 156). By 1906 he had transmitted the human voice over a distance of 10 miles. Fessenden also established an experimental station in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, just south of Plymouth. From there he wrote to phonograph companies asking for a good phonograph and several records, especially recordings of Sousa, Caruso, and violin solos. At 9 p.m., Christmas Eve, 1906, when wireless operators of several United Fruit Company ships in the Atlantic, tipped off to expect something unusual on their NESCO*-provided sets, listened in, they heard Fessenden transmit a recording of Handel?s “Largo” on an Ediphone, play “Oh Holy Night” on the violin, and read from the bible before wishing them a Merry Christmas.

“The Christmas Eve program is still considered the first radio broadcast in American history?” (Douglas, 156).
Continue reading

Mixing the City

In Radioscape III–a project by Edwin van der Heide–there are fifteen transmitters installed around and on the Leidseplein in Amsterdam, each broadcasting its own musical layer. Van der Heide designed a receiver that allows you to receive and mix the signals of two, three or more transmitters simultaneously. At a certain moment you receive one transmitter the strongest, the second a bit softer and the rest might be inaudible. By walking through the environment the balance between the transmitters is changing, new ones are fading in while others are fading out. Van der Heide: “The city centre forms a musical labyrinth with different layers of sound that, together, form a meta composition. By moving you mix the different layers which lead to new combinations and interferences.”
Continue reading

The Other Path is a project by C5 that combines landscape exploration with what I might call “speculative geography”. C5 members went on a trek to collect GPS data about the Great Wall of China. They will sift through the mass of data they obtained about the Great Wall, to discover the most similar terrain that exists in California (where C5 is based).

The project’s intention is to “create exploration in a time when everything has been explored.” An interesting objective, one that raises political and social questions about the value of exploration and its impact.

“The Other Path” is part of C5’s Landscape Initiative. (Posted by Michelle Kasprzak)

Inventing a way to pray

Performance project in Exit Art’s 10th Avenue window: CALL FOR PROPOSALS: For consideration in the prayingproject stop by Exit Art Thursday, Friday, Saturday October 28, 29, 30, 2-4pm to discuss your proposal with the curators.

prayingproject gives a stage and voice to spirituality as a form of cultural expression. Exit Art is an experimental cultural center that is exploring spiritual necessity with this project. Prayer is how you express yourself to reach a spiritual state, a personal initiative with reason and purpose, a way to have a private experience that is collective. The act of creativity is an act of contemplation and auto-analysis which has parallels in the act of praying. Praying is a way to reach our own divinity, a performance in our lives that we are translating into a performance of art.
Continue reading

Image [&] Narrative

Issue 9. Performance–Guest edited by Karel Vanhaesebrouck–includes the following two articles:

Towards a theatrical narratology? Author: Karel Vanhaesebrouck Published: October 2004

Abstract (E): Traditionally narratology has always been associated with the study of texts and their constituting narrative elements. The analysis of theatre was then down-sized to the analysis of the theatre text. However, new developments in theatre and dance, in which the text is reduced to a mere peripheral element of the actual performance, ask for new analytic tools. How can a traditionally text-centred theory be transformed into a performance-oriented method for analysis, paying attention to the interpretive role of the spectator and taking into account the context the actual performance takes place in?

Performance and cognitive narratology Author: Jeroen Versteele Published: October 2004

Abstract (E): The last couple of years, (dance-)theatre companies that make use of ?new media? in their shows, have grown numerous and increasingly successful. This article focuses on some fragments in such productions that combine a theatrical setting with references to cinema language. It tries to distinguish three different relationships formal theatrical and filmic conventions can have with one another, and it relies on procedures in cognitive narratology to explain the effect such hybrids have on their audience.

A tool for collaborative mobile learning

MapTribe is a software application for mobile phones. It enables group of users to see each other’s position on a city map on the screen display, and to add on this shared map a certain number of objects that will positioned on the map according to the user’s real position in the city.

MapTribe is based on the idea that every person retains and develops over time an image of the spaces s/he lives, which may be quite different from the physical inhabited place. It is commonly experienced, in fact, that places are enriched of psychological features that transform their perception. MapTribe is a tool for exchanging and comparing these personal images of the city among a group of friends. The tool we are developing helps people in analysing, capturing and visualizing this mental structure and to share it in a social network. From the negotiation of the differences between the maps of each participant in the group, a common understanding raises, an informal learning obtained by each user of the system about the image of the city.

Collaborative Rhythm Generator with an SMS Interface

Cell Phone Drum Machine is a rhythm generator that can be controlled by users with their phones by sending text messages. Here’s how it works: the operator links his/her phone to the computer and starts the drum sequencer. Users can then send special SMS commands to the operator’s phone that controls the rhythm. The on-screen display shows from which phones commands originated.

Matt Hall and John Watkinson will present the project at dorkbot-nyc on Wednesday, November 3rd, 7pm at Location One in SoHo.

Drama, Mediation, Performance and Mobile Games

Intermedia at the University of Oslo has an interesting project about mobile gaming. RE-PUBLIC is a project that deals with humanistic perspectives on emerging digital communication forms & expressions & their information systems.

What are the dramaturgical and mediational features of commercial mobile games? Do location sensitive, always online, portable gaming terminals change the dramaturgical and mediational features of commercial mobile games? How will such terminals interact with ubiquitous computing in the physical environment to create new forms for hybrid games? How and to what extent are the less pre-scripted qualities of mobile and context-related play realised textually and interpersonally? How can the humanities inform and perform ICTs and vice versa? What can the study of computer games tell us about performance and the obverse? How can performance influence the design of computer games? What kinds of performances emerge in multi-player role-playing games?

Originally from pasta and vinegar, reBlogged on Clippings on October 27, 2004

Tap for the Streets

New York designer and researcher Despina Papadopoulos, the founder of Studio 5050, had the idea for the Click Sneaks while walking down a cobblestone street, wearing sneakers next to a friend wearing stilettoes.

The artist recorded the “click” sound of high heels on a voice chip and had it activated on each step the revamped sneakers take. A speaker, an amplifier and a sensor acting as a “switch” on the sole of each foot, transform these seemingly normal sneakers into a sound performance.

Via Horizon Zero. originally from Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women, reBlogged by bev on btang reblog