| 08:30 | Registration |
| 09:00 | Coffee + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 1a |
| 09:45-10:00 | Introduction: Moderator (Steve Gibson, Interactive Futures, Canada) |
| 10:00-10:45 | Keynote: HOW to MAKE SURE NOBODY CAN FIGURE OUT YOUR INTERACTIVE ART, Jan Borchers, RWTH Aachen University |
| 10:45-11:00 | Questions: Keynote |
| 11:00-11:30 | Talk: CONDUCT YOURSELF!, Art Clay, ETH Zurich Computer Systems Institute |
| 11:30-12:00 | Talk: GLIMMER: CREATING NEW CONNECTIONS, Jason Freeman, Georgia Institute of Technology |
| 12:00-12:30 | Talk: FORMALIZED and NON-FORMALIZED EXPRESSION IN MUSICAL INTERFACES, Cornelius Pöpel, Academy of Media Arts Cologne |
| 12:30-12:45 | Questions: Clay, Freeman, Pöpel |
| 12:45-14:15 | Lunch Pause + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 1b |
| 14:00-14:30 | Talk: MAPPING SPACES(s): DIGITAL MEDIA ART in CANADA in the 21st CENTURY, Steve Gibson, University of Victoria, Canada |
| 14:30-15:00 | Talk: COLLECTIVE SURVEILLANCE PLAY, Will Pappenheimer, Digital Media Dept., Pace University, New York |
| 15:00-15:15 | Questions: Gibson, Pappenheimer |
| 15:15-15:35 | Talk: ARTIFICIAL, NATURAL, HISTORICAL: AMBIGUITIES of SYNTHETIC SOUND in DOCUMENTARY FILM, Julian Rohrhuber, University Cologne and Academy of Media Arts |
| 15:35-15:55 | Talk: INTERREALTION: SOUND-TRANSFORMATION and RE-MIXING in REAL TIME, Hannes Raffaseder, University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, Austria |
| 15:55-16:15 | Talk: SOFTWARE, SURVEILLANCE, SCARINESS AND SUBJECTIVITY, Amy Alexander, Dept. of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego |
| 16:15-16:30 | Questions: Rohrhuber, Raffsaeder, Alexander |
| 16:30-17:15 | Poster Session |
| 17:15-19:00 | Dinner Pause + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 1c + SOUNDSCAPE Session 1 |
| 08:30 | Registration |
| 09.00 | Coffee + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 2a'' |
| 09:45-10:00 | Introduction: Moderator (Simon Schubiger-Banz, Swisscom Innovations, Switzerland) |
| 10:00-10:45 | Keynote: MUSICKING NETWORKS, Atau Tanaka, Sony CSL Paris |
| 10:45-11:00 | Questions: Keynote |
| 11:00-11:30 | Talk: SCENTORY DESIGNS®, Jenny Tillotson, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design |
| 11:30-12:00 | Talk: FLUID INTERFACES, Stijn Ossevoort, ETH Zurich |
| 12:00-12:30 | Talk: ACTIVIST DISCOURSES: INSIDE the LAB CONTEXT, Jill Scott, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Zurich |
| 12:30-12:45 | Questions: Tillotson, Ossevoort, Scott |
| 12:45-14:15 | Lunch Pause + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 2b |
| 14:00-14:30 | Talk: MAKING THE TOOLS THAT MAKE US, Jürg Gutknecht, Computer Systems Institute, ETH Zurich |
| 14:30-15:00 | Talk: GRAMMAR-BASED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Pascal Müller, ETH Zurich Computer Vision Lab |
| 15:00-15:15 | Questions: Gutknecht, Müller |
| 15:15-15:45 | Talk: FUNCTORS FOR MUSIC: THE RUBATO COMPOSER SYSTEM , Guerino Mazzola and Gérard Milmeister, University of Zurich |
| 15:45-16:15 | Talk: COMPOSING LIVE MULTIMEDIA, Stefan Müller Arisona, ETH Zurich Computer Systems Institute |
| 16:15-16:30 | Questions: Mazzola / Milmeister, Müller Arisona |
| 16:30-17:15 | Poster Session |
| 17:15- 19:00 | Dinner Pause + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 2c + SOUNDSCAPE Session 2 |
| 08:30 | Registration |
| 09.00 | Coffee + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 3a'' |
| 09:45-10:00 | Introduction: Moderator (Will Pappenheimer, Pace University, New York) |
| 10:00-10:45 | Keynote: THE ASSASSINATION OF TIME , Prof. Dr. Johnny Golding, University of Greenwich, Maritime Campus |
| 10:45-11:00 | Questions: Keynote |
| 11:00-11:30 | Talk: EXTENDING THE VIRTUAL: COMPUTER AIDED CHOREOGRAPHIE FOR DANCERS AND ROBOTS, Pablo Ventura, Ventura-Dance Company, Zurich |
| 11:30-12:00 | Talk: READING_GESTURES, Irena Kulka, Zurich |
| 12:00-12:30 | Talk: BODY DEGREE ZERO - THE ANATOMY OF AN INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE, Paul Woodrow, Department of Art, University of Calgary and Alan Dunning, Alberta College of Art and Design |
| 12:30-12:45 | Questions: Ventura, Kulka, Dunning |
| 12:45-14:15 | Lunch Pause + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 3b |
| 14:00-14:30 | Talk: SECRETS of the STAGE, Eva Sjuve, The University of Plymouth, Faculty of Technology |
| 14:30-15:00 | Talk: PERFORMANCE WITH ELECTROACOUSTIC CLOTHES, Benoit Maubrey, Artist Berlin |
| 15:00-15:15 | Questions: Maubrey, Sjuve |
| 15:15-15:35 | Talk: OLD THOUGHTS ON NEW ARTS, Franziska Martinsen, University of Basel, Philosophy Department |
| 15:35-15:55 | LANGUAGE PICTURES, Heinrich Lüber, University of Art and Design Basel |
| 15:55-16:15 | Talk: THE SITUATED BODY, Linda Cassens Stoian, University of Art and Design Basel and Sabine Gebhardt Fink, University of Art, Media and Design Zurich |
| 16:15-16:30 | Questions: Martinsen, Lüber, Cassens Stoian, Gebhardt Fink |
| 16:30-17:15 | Poster Session |
| 17:15-19:00 | Dinner Pause + DRIFTINGS Exhibition 3c + SOUNDSCAPE Session 3 |
Jan Borchers (RWTH Aachen University)
HOW TO MAKE SURE NOBODY CAN FIGURE OUT YOUR INTERACTIVE ART
First and foremost, Interactive Art is about art. Or is it? Have you torn your hair out at an "interactive" art piece because you couldn't, for the life of it, figure out how to use the stupid thing? But if most visitors can't figure out how to use an interactive art piece, then what's the point? In human-computer interaction, "fluid interaction" is the ultimate goal when designing interactive technology: Interfaces that don't get in the way of what you're trying to do, that feel "right". They disappear from your conscious thought. As Heidegger puts it: "We never perceive equipment that is ready-to-hand without already understanding and interpreting it". Now, art is often the opposite: it strives to confuse, unsettle, let you see new perspectives. And design is often in between the two: trying to look cool, but making things unusable. As interactive exhibit designers, we experience this dilemma all the time. Drawing from principles of human-computer interaction, I will try to shed some light on this conflict. I will share some wonderful examples of unusable technology, give both technologists and artists a view on usability, and invite everybody to wonder whether "artistic" and "usable" are actually mutually exclusive or not. I will shamelessly steal material from HCI and design luminaries such as Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Ben Shneiderman, Rich Gold, Terry Winograd, and others.
Atau Tanaka (Sony CSL Paris)
The live nature of music as an arts practice made it an interesting example for informing interaction design. Thus the rich field of interactive music, real-time audio software, instrumentarium of sensor-based musical instruments. Audio was at once an early application example for digital media technologies, as it is an order of magnitude less data intensive than video. At the same time music makes the most precise and subtle demands on timing resolution, responsiveness, and interaction performativity. These demands can often be generalized beyond music to benefit and inform interaction design in general. Networks, more recently wireless and mobile networks, are another domain that have been explored by musicians. However, has artistic practice on networks had the same impact that interactive music had? Networks present different temporal problematics, some unresolvable. Aside from time, networks present issues in the spatial domain, in topology, and community dynamics. While it may at first seem that music, which also exhibits spatial and social characteristics, could also inform the development of these aspects of networks, the impact has been less direct. This talk presents a body of networked music artworks and research projects spanning a period of ten years. It will be seen that a related, parallel stream of work in interfaces and interaction in music often laid the groundwork for the qualities sought in making music on networks. While this performative approach makes specific performance demands on networks, the participative social qualities of networks interestingly worked to put basic tenets and traditional roles of established musical practice in question.
Johnny Golding (Creative, Critical & Communication Studies, University of Greenwich, Maritime Campus)
Let us take as a given that we are in the throes of a paradigmatic shift brought on by the advent of the technological age, with its iterant general and special relativities, 'smart' bombs and guerrilla-terror warfare tactics. It could be said, then that what consitutes contemporary aesthetics is not merely or only (or even specifically) a matter of machinic/electronic/media production, invention and play. It is a choreography of speed and distance, morphed into an accessible techne and libidinal code. Not only does this 'code' re-configure the very substance of 'the political' and 'the ethical', but it does so by assassinating Time. In its place: the art of the digital, in all its toxic and dirty manifestations.
Guerino Mazzola and Gérard Milmeister (Artificial Intellligence Lab, University of Zurich)
In abstract mathematical music theory, the data format of denotators is associated with set-valued presheaves over module categories. In this paper, we present an implementation of this concept framework in the Rubato Composer system, a Java application comprising a GUI for manipulation and combination of rubettes. These are plug-ins that can be added and connected for communication of denotator data. Rubato Composer is a GPL software and is accessible to the computer music community for download and collaboration. In this paper, the functionality, architecture, concept framework, and the implemented mathematical operators are presented and illustrated with a “functorial composition”However, the compositional components of Rubato have not been implemented in the NEXTSTEP and Mac OS X versions. In the present implementation, called Rubato Composer, which is a Java application, the original presto features are reconsidered and implemented within the framework of functorial mathematical music theory as described in (Mazzola 2002). This gives the compositional tools an unprece- dented conceptual power. Intuitively, complex musical objects, such as dodecaphonic series, chords consisting not of ordinary notes, but of collections of melodies, or ornaments of rhythmic patterns, and, more generally, macro-object con-
Jürg Gutknecht (Computer Systems Institute, ETH Zurich)
This talk addresses a growing interest in the use of computers in the arts in general and a quite apparent need to accompany this growth with the development of new hardware tools and above all new programming languages to drive them. On the software side, programming languages must be intuitive to the artist and user in general; on the hardware side, today’s devices must not only be flexible and powerful but also be manageable and mobile. Whether it be computer driven music, interactive dance or hyper narration in storytelling, the computer receives a much larger reception amongst the general consuming populace through the arts as it did in its early days, when it was employed almost exclusively by Government and industry. Today, the demands of scientific research can easily be mated with artistic ambition and collaboration between scientist and artist cannot only underscores the research concepts inherent in the work itself, but also brings about the unique situation of taking science out of the ivory tower situation of Academia and bring before an audience to enjoy in the form of a unique hybrid art form.
Steve Gibson (Visual Arts & Digital Media, University of Victoria, Canada)
This presentation focuses on the recent of work of three Canadian Digital Media artists – Julie Andreyev, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Steve Gibson. More or less loosely influenced by the Situationists these artists consider issues of space, the body, public interaction and mobility. Distinct from American popular media hegemony, but equally engrossed in North American media culture, Andreyev, Lozano-Hemmer, and Gibson present critical but engaged visions of technological art practice for the new millennium. Mapping Space(s) presents Four Wheel Drift (2003-05) by Julie Andreyev, Body Movies (2003) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Virtual DJ (2001-04) by Steve Gibson as divergent examples of populist but epic media experiences. Each of these pieces transforms public interaction and posits radically workable solutions to the problem of interactivity that reached a stalemate at the end of the 20th Century. Discarding the artificiality of hypertext and web-based corporate “interactivity” these artists opt for more naturalistic models of interaction based on play, personal subjectivity and aimless wandering.
Amy Alexander (Visual Arts Dept., University of California at San Diego)
Technologies from Google to video surveillance promise an objective approach to analyzing data, free from the subjectivity of human interpretation. But who writes the software? To what extent do we separate the ideas of technology and human subjectivity on the one hand, while often conflating the idea of a technology with its purpose on the other? This talk will discuss the political and cultural implications of the common perception of software as mechanical, objective and mysterious. Various responses by software artists will be discussed, including livecoding performance and hacktivist proxy servers. The talk will also introduce the public space performance project "SVEN: Surveillance Video Entertainment Network - aka 'AI to the People.'" The SVEN project develops computer vision algorithms to identify people with "desirable" characteristics instead of "undesirable" ones, as well as algorithms that implement film grammar in surveillance video - thus turning surveillance videography into music video cinematography. The project asks the question: If computer vision technology can be used to detect when you look like a terrorist, criminal, or other "undesirable" - why not when you look like a rock star?
Linda Cassens Stoian & Sabine Gebhardt Fink (University of Art and Design, Basel)
The recent discussions on performativity and the body in media-enhanced performances is not a repetition of bodytheories of the 90ths, but a discousefield with new concepts and methods. In correspondance to "ambient intelligence" research it is urgent to theorize the body in relation to its situation or situatedness.
In my research field entitled "art theory"- I decided to combine the model of the "performative space" with actual theories concerning the episteme of the body. My aim is to deliver differing concepts of understanding embodiement. Including the multisite view of performance and the actual debate on mediality. The situated body is defined in a polyvalent sense. Subsuming understanding and affectedness under action. For the first time the body model of phenomenology is reworked under aspects of performance. How can we grasp this dynamic system called body image? In my lecture I will read media-enhanced performances through the looking-glass of "being affected", as accumulation-systems of commitments, actions and intentions.
Art Clay (Digital Art Weeks, ETH Zurich)
With the redirection of music style caused by the introduction of aleatorics in combination with the recent developments in computer software for music and the miniaturization of hard-ware, there has been an increase of means for creating music works in which the previously unknown possibilities to explore new ways of creating cohesion in works played by ensembles. In accord with Thoreau’s’ idea that the best government is one that governs the least, a composer would agree that there are various methods for creating cohesive musical structures with-out hierarchical control by a conductor. In the past, these have included various forms of “stopwatches”: the human stopwatch, or conductor, the digital video display of running time, the standard stopwatch and of course the metronome. In this paper, further possibilities of non-hierarchical, or individual conduc-tion techniques using ubiquous sensor networks are introduced and works performed with tools based on such methods will be demonstrated.
Jason Freeman (Georgia Institute of Technolgy)
Glimmer, a composition by the author for chamber orchestra and audience, seeks to actively engage orchestral audiences by creating new connections between composer, performers, and listeners that enable them to collaborate to create the music together during each performance. Each audience member is given a battery-operated light stick that he or she uses to participate. Computer software, written in Cycling ‘74’s Max/MSP/Jitter environment, analyzes live video of the audience and sends instructions to the orchestra via multi-colored lights on each player’s stand. A simple video projection animates the activities of audience groups and the competition between groups. This paper outlines the theoretical background and motivations for creating Glimmer and describes the conceptual framework and technical realization of the work in detail. Two performances of the work are evaluated with respect to the audience, the musicians, and the resulting music that was created, and with respect to the project’s design goals of accessibility, reliability, transparency, and sustained interest. The challenges of integrating new collaborative networks and technology into conventional orchestral performances are also addressed.
Irena Kulka (Free lance Dancer & Media Artist, Zurich)
This talk will point out concepts of gesture and gesture recognition from motor physiology and physics and juxtaposes them with artistic concepts of gesture. From this, novel ideas regarding gesture recognition for artwork will be discussed. Chosing individual pieces of art, the talk will present characteristic examples of different gesture-based concepts, their developments as observed in performative and visual arts, and how gesture-based concepts form our thinking in multimedia art. The last part of the talk will discuss visions and reality, based on concrete examples of gesture-based artwork realized at the Department of Computer Science of the ETH Zurich.
Heinrich Lüber (University of Art and Design, Basel)
Heinrich Lüber’s work combines elements of performance with photography, video, installation and object-art. The various media are connected by the artist in order to create a situation in which the synergy of elements can be researched. The artistic extended length of the body and the creating an enhanced sense of presence through the use of language are of prime importance to his work, because in this way visual and acoustic impressions are interplay and form the performative image. Again, the connection to language is of prime importance. Fragments such as those in the language of children, the language of rituals, body language and lost words for example are picked up, removed from their semantic context and compressed to create a graphic basis of linguistic form. This involves the use of props, poles and scaffolding. Articulation is set towards the outside like a skin turned inside out. The “exhibits” take place in public space, thus extending the concept of the inside turned outward. The impossibility of either a standardised conception of truth or perception is physically present in the pursuit of modern language criticism. Following this line of thought, spectators are the intellectual receptor and it is indeed their experience, which plants individual acts in a field of recollection and assigns images to their proper place.
Franziska Martinsen (Philosophical Seminar, University of Basel)
Die Raumparameter eines Kunstwerks ergeben sich nicht nur aus den physikalischen, die wir – für jeden anscheinend offenkundig – mit unserer Alltagswahrnehmung erfassen. Das Kunstwerk ist wie jedes Objekt unserer Erkenntnis ein Konstrukt, konstruierte Realität, die in Abhängigkeit unseres a priori und a posteriori mannigfaltige Dimensionen hat. Materialität und Virtualität gleichermassen gestalten den Raum der Wahrnehmung, abstrakt und konkret. Die Strukturen und Möglichkeiten der Computertechnologie können diesen Sachverhalt einerseits verschärfen und veranschaulichen, andererseits ihn gänzlich auflösen. Echtheit und Simulation sind synonym, weil sich das Kunstwerk als Realität des Raumes offenbart und nicht umgekehrt. Das Kunstwerk ist verkörperter Raum, der Künstler sowohl Subjekt als auch – tritt er als Performer auf – Objekt dieses verkörperten Raums. Die Synonymität von Echtem und Simuliertem ist zunächst eine begriffliche, inwieweit sie auch eine (werkimmanente) Identität darstellt, soll anhand ausgewählter Beispiele von performativen Kunstwerken (u.a. „Going Publik“ von Art Clay, Schweiz), die sich der Computertechnologie wie z.B. GPS bedienen, aufgezeigt und im Kontext historischer und zeitgenössischer philosophischen Raum- und Virtualitätskonzeptionen diskutiert werden.
Benoit Maubrey (Free Lance Artist, Berlin)
Electro-acoustic clothes are clothes equipped with amplifiers and loudspeakers, which make sounds by interacting with the environment. Often the electronics are adapted from one set of clothes into an entirely new ones. "Audio Uniforms" are "Sonic Costumes” that reflect local customs , themes, or traditions. " AUDIO GEISHA/Japan, AUDIO CYCLISTS/France, AUDIO HANBOK/Korea come to mind. In the more recent AUDIO PEACOCKS project wearable electronic instruments are constructed from polycarbonat plexiglass material shaped into a peacock’s fan-like plumage. The plexiglass surface is equipped with 16 loudspeakers (150 watts power), amplifiers, and rechargeable 12 volt batteries. The "audio-plumage" is highly directional and functions like an electroacoustic radar dish. An Audio Peacock can use its own site-specific electronic instruments or amplify and alter its voice by using a built-in microphone, sampler, and digital filter. Also, The Peacock can receive sounds from outside sources via transmitter/receiver and disseminate them in a space by orienting its plumage. VIDEO PEACOCK is the most recent performance project. It’s costume is based on the Audio Peacock, but is used as a mobile projection screen to visually enhanced it.. Video-taped images are projected simultaneously to the sounds on the costume. In a more spectacular sense the Peacock's own real-time image can be projected live onto its costume as a form of "video-feedback".
Pascal Müller (Computer Vision Laboratory, ETH Zurich)
Buildings are systems of high structural, spatial and functional complexity and their appearance is specified through arbitrary design choices made by architects. In this talk, we present a shape grammar for the grammar-based designing and modeling of buildings which is capable to encode formalisms of divers architectural styles. Furthermore, we introduce transformations in architectural design which allow combining existing designs to create a new one by using the grammar's semantic information. Various examples will be given which illustrate (1) the preceding analysis of architectural form and content, (2) the design process with grammars, and (3) the delicate task of finding the balance between emergence and predictability in such a computational design system.
Stefan Müller Arisona (Computer Systems Institute, ETH Zurich)
Traditionally, interactive multimedia tools for artistic live performance adapt a conservative composition - performance scheme: Composition takes place during a preparation phase and typically results in a structural setup of the anticipated performance. For example, the structure is reflected by musical score excerpts, data flow networks for audio processing, or scene and effects graphs for graphics and video processing. During performance, the given compositional structure remains fixed, and artistic expression remains limited to parameter changes of individual network nodes. This talk addresses the problem of eliminating the gap between composition and performance and of employing compositional methods during live performance. We show how "live composition" can substantially contribute to the artist's freedom and expression. We further show how these methods are leveraged by the Soundium multimedia platform and will highlight concrete performance scenarios.
Stijn Ossevoort (ETH Collegium Helveticum & SOS Design Zurich)
Some call it "ubiquitous computing", others call it "pervasive computing" or "the disappearing computer". Regardless of the terminology, it has all brought about a new era of computing: i.e. wearable computing. In the near future designers will be able to add a behavior to objects and thus augment the nuances of the real world of the everyday with interactivity. For the area of wearable technology, there seems to be no technical limitations. However, the social aspects involved are challenging, the clothes we wear provide us with a certain amount of privacy, status, identification, self-adornment and self-expression. In this talk varied aspects of wearable technologies from fashion to the arts, including a brief touching on of many of the technologies that they embrace, will be discussed and demonstrated. Also, the social interaction in both private and public domains which result from the use of these embedded technologies, how they become an indispensable part of our lives life and how they change our behavior in both private and public domains will also be covered: we think we use these technologies, but they also 'use' us - their behavior shapes our behavior.
Will Pappenheimer (Digital Art Dept, Pace University, New York)
Network performance, especially conducted through technologies such as the web camera, suggests from the onset, a reversed emphasis on the subject. Conversely, if viewers or online participants are able to affect the performance, the resulting composition can be understood as collective. In a recent paper entitled, “The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment1,” written for surveillance-and-society.org, authors, Anders Albrechtslund and Linsey Dubbeld explore the alterior potential of surveillance in playful, humorous, pleasurable and even caring practices. Adopting sinister social (and now socio-technological) interactions for pleasure, play, mimicry, and diversion is indeed a subversive tradition within the arts and culture at large. This paper will explore avenues within the arts, particularly the technologically based arts, which further subvert this territory. I will look specifically at projects that confound one-way directives, suggest alternate motives for viewing, and collapse the concept of Panopticism by providing the subject with evidence of the presence of the hidden virtual viewer or controlling network (however distant and disembodied). Questioning traditional oppositions of virtual and corporeal, empiricism and representation, “embodiment” can take on more pluralistic or holistic dimensions. What might constitute avenues of caring and community within a surveillance apparatus and its artistic counterparts? The presentation will focus on network/collective artworks attached to, reaching towards, or in conjunction with performance/installation, engaging overlapping technological, virtual and public space in testing this trajectory.
Cornelius Pöpel (Academy of Media Arts Cologne)
Many musical interfaces are designed to enable a musician for the creation of musical expression. In this process it is the task of the interface to generate data transmitting the expressivity of the players’ gestures to the synthesis engine. The instrument has to be open or transparent for the players’ actions. Building interfaces with this kind of openness may be seen as a problem in interface development because the actions of the player have to be translated from a phenomenological level to a formal level. This paper investigates the idea to create openness by leaving essentials non-formalized. Examples of implementations in the fields of musical instruments and computer games using this method are presented. The tasks of openness, transparency and flexibility for the user’s intentions are discussed.
Hannes Raffaseder (University of Applied Sciences, St Pölten, Austria)
Sound is definitly a transient medium. To hear a specific sound, you had to hear it “now or never”. That is why music was always considered to be a time-based art form. Of course this situation changed because of the possibilities of sound recording and sampling. CD, Walkman and of course the I-Pod superseded the concert as an important event. Nowadays we download music from the web just like water from the tap. Music is always available at any time and any place. We don´t care about the beginning and the end of the music anymore.We are not aware of form, dramaturgy and strucutre of a composition. Simply playing a song again and again looses its time structure. But more often music and sound defines the athmosphere of a certain ambience as for instance in bars and clubs. While listening to music with headphones in public space, we try to create a world of our own. With music we define our private area within the public space. Taking these facts into consideration, the paper discusses the interrelation of time and space in electronic music and explains techniques for sound-transformation and re-mixing in real time as used in projects like staTdT_kunst, SNAIL and the Boxberg-Sinfonie.
Julian Rohrhuber (SFB Media and Cultural Communication, University Cologne and Academy of Media Arts)
The relations between cinematic image and cinematic sound are by no means symmetric. Corresponding to their specific features in experience, their interplay brings about a multitude of cinematic spaces. Structuring diegetic space, typically there are various levels of authenticity attributed to them. Documentary film maintains a relation to this authenticity, which, without doubt, has to be full of tensions. In a characteristic way, its natural sound forms a plane of physicality in which the separation between artificial and natural elements is essential for its common diegetic structure. This talk will discuss the role of synthetic sound in the authenticity / historicity construction of documentary film in the light of the documentary "All that we have" (Kamensky, 2004) and its making.
Jill Scott ( University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Zurich)
By now a number of artists-in-residence projects have taken place and it has become apparent that in art and science no ground rules exist about life in the lab context. However, in this presentation I would like to start to lay some guidelines for discourses about social responsibility, ethics and creativity for media artists, which are based on two experiences, one as an artist (e-skin) and one as a curator (The Artists-in-labs Project). Beginning with eight guidelines, my main premise is that immersive science lab contexts in combination with interactive media art technologies, may offer some very unique potentials for both artists and scientists to affect social change. Such discourses might seem difficult to implement, but I would like to illustrate them with actual experiences in the life, physics, computer, and engineering sciences. The general public is mostly uninformed about many scientific debates. Perhaps by using these discourses, artists can leave religious morals aside and speak more clearly to the public about ethical and social controversies, rather than resort to the use of scare tactics and shock value. The results can be highly skilled and reflective artworks, which might not only gain more respect from science but also be more relevant to the holistic view of sustainable life. What is central, indeed crucial to this view, is that both art and science try to retain a solid and informed commitment towards humanities social improvement.
Eva Sjuve (Faculty of Technology, University of Plymouth)
This talk is examining the use of wearable technology, augmented performance and the use of interfaces, from the 1870’s use of electricity until today’s computational devices, which have been documented. In the 1870’s, the combination of unmediated (face-to-face) and mediated (via a medium) performance in the performing arts, was made possible by the creative use of electricity, the Victorian era’s enhanced performance. The performing arts, with a long tradition of collaboration in art & technology, where engineers created electrical devices using gestures to generate light and sound, they built interfaces for light and sound control, and introduced wearable technology. The performativity of early scientific experiments is explored, as a background to the contemporary development of wearable technology using gestures, sound and light, with demonstrations from academic lectures, public displays and demonstrations. The focus of this talk, is on the performative aspect in the use of interfaces, its art and scientific diversions is explored, with a starting point in the two different strands, the performing arts and scientific experiments, and ending with a discussion of today’s wearable interfaces using gestures, light and sound, with the interoperability of devices and convergence of technology.
Jenny Tillotson (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design)
Scentsory Design® is a multisensory project that adds aroma to fashion design by creating radical, active, ‘scentsory’ properties. The project chooses olfaction and vision as the two sensory modalities to target in order to improve quality of life, by exploring smart-fabrics that are not as passive as current microencapsulated techniques. Scentsory Design® creates ‘Emotional fashion’: responsive clothes integrated with wireless sensor networks that offer social and therapeutic value in a desirable fashion context. The clothes are engineered for psychological end-benefits such as stress-reduction, by incorporating body sensors and microfluidics to initiate fragrance delivery. The sensors detect stress physiologically and the microfluidics produce benefit chemicals in controlled ways responding to personal needs. The smart fabrics imitate the human body as they have their own nervous system, which allows the user to experience and control the different emotional states of a garment as a holistic ‘healing platform’.
Pablo Ventura (Director, Ventura-Dance Company, Zurich)
Dance is an extension of the body by natural means. But if dance is also an expression of contemporary body-consciousness, it must transform itself artistically by opening up to the new technological possibilities. And it possesses a particularly sensitive means of responding to them: movement. The wish to find new, contemporary dance figures that, rather than ennobling human beings as beautiful creatures of nature, show them in conflict with their technological environment led Ventura to work with technology. The point is to question traditional aesthetic norms and expand the formal vocabulary. The resulting creative choreographic process is both formally and thematically at the interface of the relationship between human being and machine.
Paul Woodrow (University of Calgary, Canada) & Alan Dunning (Alberta College of Art and Design, Canada)
The Project's works establish a recursive loop in which the invisible actions of the body are manifest and an inhabitant is required to monitor both the changing environment and the body that manifests it. This is achieved through the use of a relational vocabulary of representation, in which identities are lost and gained, subsumed by a non-identifiable collection of other identities. One interesting consequence of this is that body-degree-zero comes to represent a functional alternative to the Cartesian or Lacanian constructions of self. No longer are minds fed back onto the self-reflection of psychology or philosophy, but rather "bodies" are fed back upon themselves - experiencing the data derived from a physical presence that at one and the same time is theirs and not theirs. Heartbeats form not only the internal rhythm of living, but an external soundscape; brainwaves, stripped of privacy, begin to girate on electronic screens; and McLuhan's prophecy fulfilled as the data-skeleton of autonomic bodily processes becomes clothing worn, subject to all the same rules of designer fashion and aesthetic self-fashioning.