Utilizing new electroacoustic instruments of their own design, J.A. Deane and David Dunn present an evening of expansive sonorities that explore leading edge improvisation and scientific sonification. Combining their unique skills ‘as significant figures in multiple contemporary music traditions (jazz, free improvisation, classical new music, electroacoustic composition, sound art, biomusic, early music, world music, and microtonal performance), this duo presents music that draws upon new understandings of both ancient and modern insights into the fundamental nature of sound to effect human consciousness.

Also featured is the premiere of 4 Plus 4, an 8 channel collaborative sound piece by Philip Mantione and Martin Back. Each will precompose 4 channels of sound in a blind collaboration to be mixed live for the first time.

Deane performs upon a one-of-a-kind “lapsteel dulcimer” whose design is informed by the traditional Chinese qin, modern Western amplified plucked-string guitars, and the most recent innovations in digital modeling of string acoustics. Essentially the instrument is comprised of three monochords playable in both directions with an amazing arsenal of novel techniques. The resultant sound can also be modified through a palette of powerful signal processing devices.

Dunn uses a novel set of non-linear chaotic oscillators capable of generating an infinite variety of “auditory behaviors” emergent from their status as autonomous electronic systems. Based upon the theory of “biological autonomy” and new principles in cognitive science, these circuits represent an alternative design philosophy for the creation of electronic sound synthesis. More akin to living systems than information processing devices, these circuits produce a dazzling assortment of complex noises and pure tones that emerge as a type of self-organizing machine conversation. The resultant textures provide a stream of constantly changing sonic worlds for Deane to imitate, challenge, submerge into, or redirect. Together, these musicians and instruments interact to produce some of the most imaginative and challenging soundscapes in contemporary music. All of the final sounds will be heard through a state-of-the-art, 8-channel surround sound system.

ARTIST BIOS:

J.A. Deane has appeared on recordings with Ike & Tina Turner, Brian Eno and John Zorn, while producing an equally diverse range of his own music for both large and small ensembles. Deane pioneered the use of “Live Electronics & looping” (playing trombone with Indoor Life and Butch Morris) and “Live Sampling” (playing electro-acoustic percussion with Jon Hassell). He has created theatrical sound designs for writer/directors Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, Julie Hebert, Christoph Marthaler, and Theater Grottesco, winning critical acclaim in the United States and Europe. He has also composed and recorded music for over fifty dance works in collaboration with choreographer Colleen Mulvihill. Deane has appeared as a musician throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, working with Butch Morris in his Conduction projects since 1985 (Conduction #3). In 1996, Deane moved to New Mexico where he works with a number of ensembles including the acclaimed Out of Context conduction ensemble. Out of Context has performed a real-time score to the classic 1932 silent film “Peter Pan”, a concert at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum “playing” the photographs of Edward Weston, a concert “playing” the book – 1” = 25 Miles, by Sumner Carnahan, a theatrical score for Theater Grottesco’s Wenomadmen, released 4 critically acclaimed CDs, and contributed new signs and gestures to the Conduction Lexicon. In 1999 Deane began researching Human BioAcoustics, Five-Element Theory, harmonics and non-locality, exploring connections between the meridian system and the body’s natural ability to come into energetic balance through the use of low frequency sound waves.

David Dunn is a composer who performs, lectures and engages in site-specific interactions and research-oriented activities. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He was an assistant to the legendary American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. Other mentors included composers Kenneth Gaburo and Pauline Oliveros, in addition to Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in over 500 international forums over five continents. Besides his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals and been the recipient of over 35 grants and fellowships for both artistic and scientific research. Dunn was the recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award for Music in 2005 and the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center in 2007.

PRESS CONTACT:
Philip Mantione
music@philipmantione.com
505-466-4832

*

The notion of concrete sound, and the specificity of the listener’s relationship to sound sources in space are central to [The User]’s approach. Beyond being sound-producing instruments, the Coincidence Engines installations are free-standing, quasi-architectural constructions that are integral to the viewer-listener’s absorption in fields of sonorous expression. The work’s hybrid, interdisciplinary approach is simultaneously engaging and sophisticated. Coincidence Engines’ potent experiential qualities provide multiple points for audiences’ interactions with an innovative form of contemporary cultural expression.

[The User]

[The User] is a contemporary art collective comprised of architect and installation artist Thomas McIntosh, and composer and sound artist Emmanuel Madan. This Canadian duo has attained wide international recognition for their ground-breaking projects Silophone and Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers, which re-imagine relationships between technological systems, culture and human experience in striking ways.

[The User]’s installation practice is characterized by experiential clarity, conceptual sophistication and technical accomplishment. The artists’ juxtaposition of recycled and contemporary technology has produced innovative and evocative statements concerning repetition, instrumentality and subjectivity. [The User]’s projects can be described as ‘emergent systems’ involving the orchestration of real-time processes that manifest themselves for an audience in a specific presentation space. Appreciation of [The User]’s work by audiences and curators has led to a significant number of exhibitions, presentations and awards in the international media arts milieu.

Further information about [The User] and its members’ individual practices can be found at the following web sites:

www.silophone.net
www.theuser.org
www.ondulation.net
www.freedomhighway.org

Analogous invites proposals for presentation at Analogous Interactions events for the International Computer Music Conference, taking place at Stony Brook University, in association with New York University, and the Electronic Music Foundation of New York City. Works should explore the intersection of computer music and emergent phenomena — including, but not limited to, generative sound- and video-works, performative ecologies and installations, live-coding and musical improvisation, reality-based games and social experiments, biomedical hacking and new technology, artificial intelligence and chaordic systems. Works should be “nondeterministic”, having an unpredictable and/or live element, and should be appropriate for a performance, an installation, or a social event. (Both works-in-progress and finished works will be considered.)

Visit here to submit work for ICMC 2010. Applicants may submit more than one work, however, a separate proposal must be made for each. Select “Analogous Interactions” for AI-related works. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2009.

Submissions must include the following

* Title of Work.
* Artist(s) Contact Information.
* Topic Area: Select “Analogous Interactions”.
* Project Keywords.
* Project Abstract.
* PDF file containing:
* Type of work: Choose from “Performance”, “Installation”, or “Social Activity”.
* An Artist Biography (250-word maximum).
* An Artist Statement (250-word maximum).
* A Project Description (350-word maximum).
* Detailed Technical Specifications (100-word maximum).
* Zipped folder containing three appropriate excerpts and/or other samples of the work to be presented (MP3-formatted audio files, MP4-formatted video files, and/or PDF schematics).

(Visit here to view the official ICMC Call for Works. Visit here for information regarding the International Computer Music Conference. Please direct all eligibility questions and other ICMC- or AI-related inquiries to Marie [at] AnalogousProjects.org.)

ABOUT ANALOGOUS PROJECTS

Complexity theory is not new to art or to our culture. It migrated from computer science and biology to economics and art and, with the advent of the world wide web, it invaded our collective subconscious. Analogous seeks to support complexity-driven art and artists playing under this conceptual umbrella of “Interaction Art”. Progress occurs by metaphor and analogy: Their hope is (by bringing together people and projects irrespective of media and genre) to enable philosophical crosstalk. Analogous events and performances have been reviewed in The Wire, Make Magazine, Time Out New York, and The Village Voice. They received a Village Voice Best-of-NYC Award in October 2008 for “Best Arts Organization Centered Around Recycling”.

ABOUT THE ICMA

The International Computer Music Association is an international affiliation of individuals and institutions involved in the technical, creative, and performance aspects of computer music. The ICMA serves composers, engineers, researchers, and musicians who are interested in the integration of music and technology.

The Blackest Flux is an experiment toward abstraction of space/body. By using acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena, it creates a state of disorientation and a series of tactile movement of sound masses over space.

Yutaka Makino is an artist and researcher currently based in Los Angeles. He seeks to amalgamate the historic precedents of computational composition and science, involving research in non-standard sound synthesis, spatial perception, acoustics, collective behavior, complex dynamical systems and emergence. His works range from sculpture to sound works including computer music compositions and spatial sound installations, which utilize spatial projection processes such as Wave Field Synthesis. His works have been recognized/performed at numerous festivals and competitions internationally. He has been awarded the Prix Ton Bruynèl 2007 and the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm 2010. He was in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Visby International Center for Composers, TU Berlin Electronic Music Studio and STEIM.

With the turntablist Takuro Mizuta Lippit alias dj sniff of STEIM, he frequently performs as Audile. In 2009, he founded an independent computer music label, Strukto

For more information, please call Nick Marmor at 516-987-6561 or

David Steinberg: mobile music machines - Lots of interesting musical software have been developed more or less recently for portable videogames consoles (Gameboy, PSP, etc.), PDAs or other similar platforms. I’ll present many of these applications (for Nintendo Gameboy, Palm OS, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Gamepark consoles, etc.), explain what’s needed to use them, who created them, what are the advantages and disadvantages of developing musical software for each platform and of course show some examples of what can be done with these new instruments.

Sam Pluta: data structures/monoliths ii (for chion) - Video samplers. Software as musical scores. Data structures as musical materials. Copyright laws. Data loops. Why Chewbacca is not in the OS X spell checker. Blocks of sounds. Laptop improvisation. And Michel Chion. All this and more will be discussed as Sam Pluta presents his work, data structures/monoliths ii (for chion).

Christina McPhee: Shake Stations - California-based filmmaker and artist Christina McPhee is ‘outback’ in earthquake country this summer, shooting HD video at Parkfield, California with new media installation artist DV Rogers (New Zealand / Sydney). DV is building and activating a major land art work- a hydraulically activated, remote -sensor activated seismic intervention table. DV’s PIEQF installation reacts to mini-tremors and shakes in realtime.

Following DV and crew as they install the project this summer and fall, Christina’s documentary takes on the gradual installation of the table as an elaborate time-based performance, with ironic and playful resonances to land art and the highly saturated dramatic space of sixties nouvelle vague (new wave) film. Via abstract drawing, experimental video and photomontage, Christina makes performative recordings at generative ‘moment-tensors’ where biological systems clash and meet with technological, and often security-challenged, sublime landscapes at the urban edge.

At places of emergence, at folds or ‘tesserae’ in landscapes of latent energy, her methods involve meditative engagement in remote sites like Parkfield, and also this year at live geothermal plants over the San Andreas Fault, next to the declining aquifer of Salton Sea, near the Mexico / California border. Her work slips past the indexical to trace dynamic loops between biological and technologically emergent states, making connections between human traumatic memory, disturbed terrains, and bare life.

E.X.S.O. (Emergent Proximity Sensing Object)
Team Members: Scott Barton, Jaime De La Ree, Steven Johnson, Steven Kemper, Kezia Ofiesh

E.X.S.O.

E.X.S.O. is designed for human participation in the production of rhythms. As people interact with the moving arms, the arms respond in an immediate one to one fashion, and additionally generate rhythms played on resonant tubes. The tempo of these rhythms is based on proximity to the device. As the arm moves in relation to the human participants, the pitch of the tube changes. At first, participants will notice a one to one relationship between their proximity and the rhythms produced, but as time goes on, the system will begin to react on its own to the humans in the room–working with them, working against them, or ignoring them completely.

The skin that connects one arm to the next is a sub-structural system intended to create lateral structural stability and also to serve as a generative spatial component. As the arms move independently of one another, the skin takes on several dynamic shapes that conform to the three arm positions. The structural skin can take on many spatial qualities that result from the proximity sensors input. While the Infrared sensors serve the scale of a small scale presentation, the input could work of any type of sensor; this could make the space changing quality of the arm become a more functional component or larger scale design.

Arm movement is controlled by a DC motor attached to gears that interface with the part of the arm that enters the tube. This motor simultaneously changes the tube’s pitch and the arm’s position. A solenoid motor is connected to a beater that strikes the tube to produce sound. This sound is captured and amplified by electric microphones at the end of the tubes. LEDs attached to the arm inside the tube will illuminate when the arm moves, providing a visual trace of each arm’s movement and a visual notation of the sound being produced. The entire process is controlled by a computer running Max/MSP which interfaces with an Arduino microcontroller attached to the sensors, motors, and LEDs. Software parses the data received from the sensors and internal algorithmic processes produce emergent behavior as the arm reacts to its human observers.

Instrument Materials: 1/4″ Plexy, 1/8″ Plexy, 1/4″ threaded rod, 3/16″ nuts and bolts, zip ties, birch wood, wool fabric, ¾” Clear tube. Hardware: 3 24VDC reversible gearhead motors, 3 24VDC Ledex Solenoid motors, 6 ultrabrite aqua LEDs, 3 IR sensors (Sharp GP2Y0A21YK), 1 24V power supply, 2 Arduino Diecimila micro-controllers, 6 LED’s. Software: Arduino running Fermata 1.0, Max/MSP 4.6

Medusa
Team Members: Steven Brummond, Taylor Burgess, Yuri Spitsyn, Jonathan Zorn, Susanna Wong

Medusa

In Greek Mythology Medusa was once the most beautiful woman in the world until she angered the goddess Athena who turned into a hideous monster whose hair was made of snakes. She could transform any active man into stone with a single look. The hero Perseus eventually defeated her by cutting her head off; from which Pegasus the winged horse was born.

Medusa is an emergent instrumental environment which reacts to human force. Medusa depends on a field of modules that are individually activated by the touch of a person. When one module is activated it will change the states of its neighbors. State changes are registered by the humming of the module. The individual modules are comprised of a half spherical acrylic structure, a single solenoid in the center, a drum head, LED lights, a rotating motor on one side and a piezo disc connected to piano wire on the other side. The basic module is triggered when a person hits the piano wire. This in turn triggers the solenoid which hits the drum, effectively changing the state of the module. The state of the module refers to the humming. The humming is produced by a gear which rubs against a guitar string creating vibrations into the drum head generating sound. The speed of the motor is a function of the force a person applies to the piano wire. Once a module is triggered the delay time does not allow for the module to be triggered again for another ten seconds. The emergence of MEDUSA develops from the array of people hitting the piano wire with different forces. The different modules will continuously change state and react with different speeds of the motor. The myriad of reactions begin to develop a pattern of emergence through variation and consistency of reactions.

Instrument Materials: acrylic structure, polyester plastic drum head, guitar string, piano wire, threaded rods, bolts, LED lights, piezo disc. Hardware: 3 Arduino microcontrollers, advanced circuits. Software: MAX/MSP.

Panta Rhei
Team Members: Andrew Hamm, Lanier Sammons, Jen Siomacco, Wendy Stober. Peter Traub

Panta Rhei

The concept of Panta Rhei derives from the philosophy of Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher. Translated, Panta Rhei means “everything is in a state of flux.” Heraclitus is well noted for his belief that constant change is central to the state of the universe.

Panta Rhei is an audio/visual instrument capable of displaying an emergent system in light, allowing human interaction with that system, and translating the resulting information into both music and robotic choreography. Human interaction happens within the grid as observers insert their hands to block the flow of light between LEDs and corresponding photoresistors. The sonic elements of the piece are realized with Max/MSP. The brightness levels of individual LEDs (or groups of LEDs) may be made musical in several ways. In the current incarnation, LEDs are tied to a bank of oscillators whose envelope and pitch are determined by the level of light. A Mylar skin manipulated by solenoids provides the robotic choreography. The solenoids also respond to changes in the light level of the LED/photosensor grid. Data from the grid is monitored in Max/MSP and relayed to the solenoids through a microcontroller.

Instrument Materials: Acrylic, piano wire, plastic zip-ties, mylar, metal brad connectors. Hardware: 12 Solenoids, 4 Arduino Microcontrollers, 18 LEDs and 18 photosensors. Software: Max/MSP

Players can learn to play an instrument starting at low levels and what this does is that when the player chooses to take out their instrument, the keyboard switches to a configuration where specific keys are mapped to specific notes. For instance, 1 is C, 1 + cntrl is C#, 1 + cntrl + alt = C# up one octave, etc. In this way very specific chords can be created. Compositions can also be saved as an “ABC” file and set as a macro so that players can bust out a tune whenever after they’ve done the preliminary work or share it among the community.

Often while waiting for members of a party to arrive, players will play music or listen to the bard in their party perform for them. For me, it raises my involvement with the game another notch as I have also macroed some of my tunes to my Minstrel abilities, really adding that touch of personalization. Other players will remember specific minstrels based on the songs that they play while they’re in the party, because of that custom touch in their experience.

So what gets me now is all the emergent play centering around music that I’m seeing in the game, from random rowdiness and role play in the auction house and taverns in the game to bands and guilds of minstrels that spend most of their time playing music in-game. People I’ve shown this to have commented on the absurd “nerdity” of this system, but I really believe that this open-ended system in a MMO, a very limited environment where players really have little say on player created content, really has created an entirely new brand of emergent play without unbalancing the game world…

Bonds of Sea and Fire Duet (Xenogears)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tjnuvb0Xwk

Megaman 2 Theme / Dr. Wily Stage 1 Theme (P.S. OKKUSENMAN)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRuNOWfIIM

Overworld Theme (Dragon Warrior)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h69fzUG67iU

Original Harp Composition (This one is amazing.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PfSD7MBdt0

The Entertainer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_C02HAAneA

Hotel California
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmWqlKyVEV8

Stairway to Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFm9ifgB6OY

[Posted by Al Yang on The Asian Power Hour]

While the genesis of this piece is in SAKAMOTO Ryuichi’s opera LIFE (first performed in 1999, for which TAKATANI Shiro created the video aspects), as is evident in the title’s “fluid, invisible, inaudible …” this installation revisits the resources of sound and vision in LIFE for an entirely new deconstruction and evolution of the work. While LIFE was an experiment conducted in opera’s linear, modern form at the end of the 20th Century, LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible … is a non-linear, decentralized flow of audio and visuals which the visitors themselves enter to experience.

A grid of 3 x 3 acrylic aquariums, 30cm high and 1.2m square are hung, in a darkened room. Each carries a thin film of water inside. Each has speakers affixed at both ends. Inside of each a fog is artificially created using ultrasonic waves, percolating fluid patterns which hover between transparency and opacity. Imagery transmitted down into these tanks from projectors attached above them–at times synchronizing all aquariums, at times decoupled and seemingly autonomous–shines down through this screen of kinetic patterns woven of water and fog, connecting the imagery while ceaselessly melting, floating endlessly between flows of meaning and meaninglessness, the concrete and the abstract.

“I wanted to distance myself from the curse of time.” (SAKAMOTO)
“I wanted the imagery to project completely free of control.” (TAKATANI)

In both of their comments we can see their embrace of the emergent potential of the flowing phenomenon that is fog and the randomness of the computer to escape typically linear and conclusively established time and space.

“LIFE–fluid, invisible, inaudible …” was produced as a commissioned work at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), and exhibited from March 10 to May 28 2007 at YCAM to great critical and popular acclaim.

Thanks to SPECTRE Digest, Vol. 54, Issue 31.

Semiconductor (UK) :: July 4, Time: 8.30 p.m. For Brilliant Noise the most beautiful satellite images of the sun have been selected from an open access archive. The radiation intensity is translated into audio fragments so as to focus attention on the hidden forces of the solar system. A computer that ‘listens’ to audio files and is able to translate these into digital images, depending on the amount of resonance, is at the heart of the performance Sonic Inc: Where has the Future Gone?

Interactive Sonic Systems (ES) and Sensors_Sonics_Sights: July 7, 8.30 p.m. :: The Interactive Sonic Systems team demonstrates the electronic music instrument reactable. reactable consists of a multi-touch interface on which objects can be moved. Shifting, turning or directing these objects creates a dynamic audio art. SSS gives a performance in which visual music is created based on body movements. With their own subtle movements the trio influence the image and sound that are generated by means of sensitive sensors.

In (in)visible sounds the visitor enters the world of invisible technology. This is the world which employs the electronic fields, radio waves, frequencies and air pollution that are present around us. Erich Berger, David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Rob Davis & Usman Haque, Informationlab (Ursula Lavrencic & Auke Touwslager), Olga Kisseleva, Brandon LaBelle & James Webb, Semiconductor, and Theodore Watson.

Invisible technologies are a part of our lives even if we are not aware of them. The rise of invisible networks had such an impact that it changed our manner of communicating, working, learning and playing. Many of our daily experiences are shaped by invisible structures based on technologies employing electromagnetic fields, radio waves and wireless networks. Whether it is computers, television networks or mobile communication instruments, many of the tools we take for granted have an invisible body that we do not consciously interact with or even think about because it is invisible for the human eye. But when technologies disappear from sight, they also disappear from our consciousness, and although we are surrounded by a whole world of invisible structures, we no longer experience our environment as constructed. We interact with invisible technology in every realm of daily life, be it through mobile phones, the TV set, radios or even electronic kitchen appliances, without actually thinking about them or knowing about their functionalities. The interest in objects is therefore shifting from the technology itself to the value they have for shaping our experience: we are no longer interested in the way a tool works but in what social or cultural status it signifies. As a result, we become increasingly removed from the technology and its influence on our daily lives, actions and thoughts. To break the cycle, the exhibition (in)visible sounds goes in search of invisible networks that exist around us. Artists visualize those unperceived yet very present technologies. Some literally expose both analogue and digital networks, while others make use of exactly the invisible, surprising us with the amount of information passed on and possibilities opened up by invisible networks.

Working with sound and the specifics of the location is the main interest of artist and writer Brandon LaBelle. For his project Radioflirt (2007) he has worked together with artist James Webb, whose work explores the realms of magic, exoticism and alienation and impossible environmental phenomena. Radioflirt lets the user hear the secret narrative of the building. Utilizing a series of mini-fm radio transmitters located throughout the building, visitors are invited to follow traces of incomplete messages, hidden whispers or trembling static that appear as an ambiguous and secret narrative. Radioflirt is an intimate radio experience that aims for the heart and explores the emotional geographies of listening.

Semiconductor makes Sound Films which reveal our physical world in flux. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt have been exploring many processes of digital animation to produce experimental films and live animation. Earth Moves (2006) is a continuation of their exploration into how unseen forces affect the fabric of our world. The south-east of England is explored through a series of five audio controlled photographic panoramas. Semiconductor collected sound recordings and photographs on location along the A23 at Pease Pottage, Witterings NT reserve, Findon Valley, John St Brighton and the Adur Valley cement factory. The sounds were used to re-animate the landscape at each location. The results are captivating images and sound that seem to reveal a different reality usually hidden from us. The limits of human perception are exposed, revealing a world which is unstable and in a constant state of animation as the forces of acoustic waves come into play on our surroundings.

Rob Davis is a systems developer in the Psychology Department of Goldsmiths College, University of London, particularly interested in systems that are contingent upon the environment and the entities that inhabit it, and the adaption within such systems. Usman Haque is an architect who has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and mass-participation performances. His skills include the design of both physical spaces, and the software and systems that bring them to life. Evolving Sonic Environment III is an acoustically-coupled analog neural network, consisting of a society of devices whose behavior collectively changes in response to the pitch ascendancy or descendency that each one detects. In contrast to earlier versions of the project (which operated at much higher frequencies), humans will be able to participate more directly in the adaptation process by making sounds of their own. Each device can output at any one time a rising and/or descending tone: however, if a device hears too much of one type of tone it may get ‘bored’ and slowly modify its behavior. On the other hand, they may all coalesce in an equilibrium where they are all ‘content’ with the state of pitches in the room. This ‘contentedness’ may get disrupted when humans enter and start making their own sounds, thus perpetuating the evolving acoustic characteristics of the space. The system will remain active for the entire duration of the exhibition, so there will be many Gigabytes of data for analysis which, it is hoped, will demonstrate that adaptation has occurred over both short term and long term occupancy of the space. If this is so there should be correlations between occupancy and acoustic spectrum patterns that may change over the weeks.

Erich Berger follows a rich tradition of video artists such as the Vasulkas, Livinus van de Bundt and Bas van Koolwijk who specifically investigate into the world of electromagnetism. His audiovisual installation TEMPEST (2004) takes its name from the U.S. government code word for a set of standards for limiting electromagnetic radiation emanations from electronic equipment. Every electronic device that is switched on, whether a mobile telephone, a laptop or a GPS receiver, generates constant electromagnetic emissions, even on standby. Hidden under the user-friendly surface are autonomous processes with their own dynamic, what British designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby called ‘The Secret Life of Electronic Objects’. TEMPEST utilizes the basic principles of the ‘Van Eck Phreaking’ technique to transform purely generative graphics into a tight and intense composition of sound, noise and light. Following a long tradition of subverting military technologies for creative purposes, Erich Berger creates an audiovisual piece in which the relationship between images and sounds is precisely determined by the electromagnetic emissions produced by the monitor. The graphics that appear on the screen in TEMPEST produce radio waves which, when captured using various radios tuned to different AM frequencies, become the sharp and vibrant sounds that go along with the images.

In their work the Australian artists David Haines and Joyce Hinterding make a connection between natural phenomena and our electronically saturated world. In the live sound and video installation Purple Rain (2004) they explore the world of data transaction: the digital video projection of a mountain avalanches in response to fluctuations in the television broadcast images detected by antennas. The more signals the antennas detect, the more raging and violently the snow collapses. The power of the avalanche thus depends on the amount of electromagnetic energy and communication data that reaches the installation room via the antennas. The false video image of an illusionary natural disaster is of intense sublime power. It displays the raging energy around us produced by telecommunication and satellite networks. Haines and Hinterding use the image of the avalanching mountain like a metaphor for the natural world as threatened by and interwoven with the power of invisible networks.

Audio Space (2005-2007) is an interactive 3D ‘augmented aural space’. In the installation, visitors can leave messages for each other in space in the form of text or sound. The user - wearing a headset made up of headphones and a microphone - hears all the sounds left in simulated 3D audio, allowing them to pinpoint the location of the sound and find it in the space. Interactive artist and designer Theo Watson turns the space into a memory of the people who have interacted with it. The user can respond to messages left by previous users or seed conversation for future discussions. The combined sounds create rich, evolving atmospheres for different parts of the room, and for the user it creates a superimposed sonic environment that seems tangible and very real. The visitor gets the feeling of walking in a space filled with the ghosts of previous visitors.

Olga Kisseleva is interested in the ways people use electronic information-gathering and data-processing technologies to visualize our environment. With Landstream (2006), the Russian artist found her own way to translate a continuous flow of digital information, a stream of waves and signals understandable for only a small scientific audience, into graphic images that anyone can read . For realizing Landstream she worked with scientists from Russia, the Sorbonne and Stanford to measure the density, quality and movement of electromagnetic fields around nuclear stations, airports, and other locations. They developed an experimental program to track and translate them into graphical images. Her colorful paintings are translations of those graphics and map the dynamic flow of electronic information through the landscape in real time. Besides the new images, Kisseleva also presents documentation of the work process in order to give the audience a new insight into what she calls the electromagnetic pollution that surrounds us. The poetic abstract images let us discover a new world.

Cell Phone Disco (2006) is an experimental installation made of flashing cells. By multiplication of a mobile phone gadget, Ursula Lavrencic and Auke Touwslager from Informationlab created a space for experiencing the invisible body of the mobile phone. The flashing cells consist of one or more LEDs, a battery, and a sensor that detects electromagnetic radiation transmitted by an active mobile phone. When the sensor detects EM waves it sets off the LEDs to flash for a couple of seconds. The installation has two parts: Flashing cells with sensors of higher sensitivity are used to detect electromagnetic radiation from active mobile phones. This way a mobile aura appears around the phone, revealing a part of its invisible body. While the user moves around talking on his phone, this aura follows the conversation like a light shadow through the space. Much less sensitive cells are used to create a canvas for an inkless marker. Moving the phone close to the cells leaves a trace of light, an electromagnetic drawing. Cell Phone Disco lets the visitor experience the invisible body of his or her own mobile phone, a function that we use but never consciously experience.

In addition to the works in the exhibition a selection of video works from the Institute’s own collection can be viewed on monitors. These afford insight into an important historic tradition.

Music Rooms: The hive23 environment contains three rooms. Each room is associated with a separate musical stream that is determined by the avatars currently within that room. Each avatar is “tagged” with music they have chosen from a list of musical pieces, available outside the entrance to the three rooms. When an avatar enters or leaves a room, a new sequence of musical variations is produced for that room. These variations combine and rework parts from the songs identified with those avatars then inhabiting that room.

Music Analysis and Remixing: Each musical variation embodies harmonic and rhythmic manipulations that impose musical coherence on each combination of parts drawn from the songs worn by avatars within a particular room. These manipulations introduce variety into the note structure within each part, and the contrapuntal structure across parts, in order to make each remix unique.

Scenario: Each avatar will start by exploring each of the three rooms, encountering shifting populations of other avatars that are also exploring those spaces. Eventually each avatar would presumably spend increasing amounts of time within the room that most consistently produces musical output preferred by that avatar. This preference develops collectively as other particular avatars also increasingly spend time within that space. The shifting population of avatars in each room potentially evolves into a collective musical author with discernible musical preferences.

Other Applications: The rooms in Second Life could potentially be implemented as physical spaces in a club or art installation, where persons (each tagged with a particular song) take the place of the avatars. Or the rooms could be implemented as channels in a location-based multi-user application, tied to something like GPS navigation systems in cars. A driver following approximately the same route at roughly the same time each day would gradually settle on a particular channel, as other musically compatible drivers do likewise.

The rooms could also be seen as publishing spaces, for example, web pages where several advertising jingles coexist in the form of ongoing remixes that evolve increasing compatibility over time. The necessary ingredient for each of these applications is a music software engine that can create coherence and variety, on-the-fly, among unexpected combinations of musical inputs.

Implementation and Hosting: The music engine is a Smalltalk/Seaside/C++ based process that runs on a separate server. It receives requests via http from Linden scripts attached to Second Life objects. The server process calculates new remixes, renders MIDI-based scores into audio results via Quicktime, and streams the audio via Shoutcast servers to SL land parcels underlying each shared musical space. The music engine / web server is currently hosted on a four-core Intel Mac Pro.

Location in Second Life: The hive23 environment is located on the Second Life mainland at Mabinogion (190, 43, 63). Or it can be found within Second Life by searching Places for “hive23″. The software is currently in testing mode. The list of musical inputs currently available will be augmented over time, including the addition of musical results generated within the environment itself.

Web Site: A web site describing the environment, as well as an existing Croquet-based implementation can be found at: http://tone23.org. For a closer look at the music engine there’s a Seaside-based single-user remixer called Qtone online: http://tone23.org/qtone.