The curtain is smaller than the window, but an additional surveillance camera and an old laptop provide it with intelligence: The computer sees the pedestrians and locates them. With a motor attached, it positions the curtain exactly where the pedestrians are…The whole setup works really well. But in the end, it doesn’t protect my privacy at all. It seems that the existence of my little curtain is leading itself ad absurdum, simply by doing its job very well. My moving curtain attracts the looks of people which usually would never care about my window. It is even the star of the street, now!
A call for performances and presentations has just come through Jiscmail’s Art-All mailing list from Suzon Fuks related to her latest work Waterwheel, a networked/telematic environment. Waterwheel is:
an online space where you can interact, share, perform and debate about water as a topic and metaphor, with people around the world or right next door! It is cost-free, accessible with just a click, and open to everyone of all ages. It fosters creativity, collaboration and inter-cultural-generational exchange
Below is a video by Suzon explaining Waterwheel in some detail. Further introductory videos to Waterwheel are available here on Vimeo.
I’ve posted on several networked/telematic environments including Vistorsstudio and Aether9 in the past so these types of networked collaborative environments interest me. What’s different about Waterwheel is that it’s themed by the artist to push forward a particular research agenda.
L.S.D. (Light to Sound Device) by Benjamin Gaulon is a device for creating sound from imagery (light). Inverting the more traditional audio-visual relationship within live performance, i.e. sound generates visuals, here the performer is encouraged to create visuals which create sounds.
L.S.D feeds on light via two LDR (light depending resistor) mounted on a suction cup, allowing the sensors to be mounted on any screen surface. An analogue synthesizer converts the light input to sound waves. This device can be used in many different configurations and feeds from any light sources. Even if L.S.D can be controlled by any light source, its design is aimed at screen reading/listening.
Junction by Micah Frank is a sound sculpture generated by thousands of New York City taxi cabs as they move through the city.
Through the use of publicly available live footage from New York’s Traffic Management Center, Junction tracks the movements of taxis in some of the city’s busiest intersections. It uses their position, velocity and overall density to synthesize sounds…A taxi’s position might control only one partial of a complex frequency spectrum, or a single frame of a granular cloud. Up to 40 taxis are tracked on the grid simultaneously. They are indexed and vectored every 50 milliseconds. Once a taxi leaves the scene, its index dies and a new taxi is tracked.
The Conversation is an autonomous apparatus which is part of a series of installations and sculptures that deconstruct the fundamentals of symbolic processes.
The Conversation is an autonomous apparatus that incorporates an analogous and a digital part. These almost inseparable elements try to adapt to each other. As the process does not have a linear program it is not obvious which part controls whom.
The machine consists of 99 solenoids mounted in a circle. Together they carry three rubber bands (attractors) in the center of the circle. Each magnet works autonomously and tries to adapt to the forces in the network. The aim of the system is to keep a balance of forces. By turning the machine on, a process is activated that tries to conserve its initial state by contraction and relaxation. The rubber band acts as mediator between the single solenoids. Different initial rubber-band configurations (tensions) generate different patterns in time. Constellations appear and stay until disturbances make them decay. The whole installation is immersed in a polyphonic buzz generated by the constant shifting forces of the solenoid array.
This is a QR Code, it's a printed link to this webpage on Network Research!
Using a web-enabled mobile phone with built-in camera and QR Code reader software you can photograph this printed page to display the original webpage. For more information on how to do this please see the short article here:
