Onformative at Alpha-ville EXCHANGE

Onformative is a design studio founded by Julia Laub and Cedric Kiefer in 2010. The studio specialises in generative design covering various types of media and topics. At the intersection of technology, design and emotion, Onformative develop innovative, cross-media solutions for their customers in the domains of culture, education and technology.

Onformative is one of the great guest to talk at the first edition of Alpha-ville EXCHANGE next 17th January 2014 at Rich Mix Cinema and Arts Centre in London. Julia and Cedric have been asked to talk about their practice, influences and recent/ in progress works at the event. They are going to illustrate how they move across the commercial, artistic and sometimes educational sectors and how they use collaboration and exchange of knowledge to produce works and projects. 

Alpha-ville EXCHANGE is just a one-day event designed to offer the London art, tech and creative communities the opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, get inspired and discover new talent. More information about participant artists, programme and tickets prices here. See into the post some generative projects and concepts Onformative has been working in the last three years;

unnamed soundsculpture, 2012

"The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a moving sound sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person. For our work we asked Laura Keil  a berlin based dancer to interpret a musical piece – Kreukeltape by Machinefabriek – as closely as possible with the movement of her own body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud), doing so we were able to use the collected data throughout the further process.

The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free handling of the digital camera, without limitations of the perspective. The camera also reacts to the sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the performer. She moves to a noise field, where a simple modification of the random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality of the sound sculpture is already contained in every movement of the dancer, as the camera footage allows any imaginable perspective."

"Similar to painting, a single point appears to be still very abstract, but the more points are connected to each other, the more complex and concrete the image seems. The more perfect and complex the “alternative worlds” we project and the closer together their point elements, the more tangible they become. A digital body, consisting of 22 000 points, thus seems so real that it comes to life again.

Using 3 different microsoft kinect cameras the movement of the dancer was recorded into those 3d pointclouds that were synced and exported as one large dataset as Krakatoa particle files to be loaded into 3ds max for further rendering and creation of the 3d scene including the camera movement that is controlled by the audio as well." - Onformative

Project collaboration with Daniel Franke.

fragments of RGB, 2010

"This project experiments with illusion and perception on various levels. The classic LED screen as a medium was simulated and disintegrated by the creation of a pixel-like optic using simple projection rather than the entire image’s being comprised of individual points of light. If one examines the idea of perception more closely, especially individual perception – which differs from individual to individual – then a second consideration arises in regard to »fragments of RGB«.

We became interested in the observer’s personal view and in »re-projecting« this. The installation reacted to and changed with the viewer’s movement and, hence, his perspective and point of view. The illusion of a LED screen was destroyed and the RGB elements dissolved to form new, translated images and, thus, a transformed »reality«. Beside the installation that illustrates the sensitive interaction between person and image, »fragments of RGB« is also intended as a photographic series in which the transformations that occurred on the display were consciously photographed, whereby the effect of alienation was intensified in the design process." - Onformative

ScreenCapturer Processing library, 2012

"Probably everybody has experienced how complicated it might be to work with video in Processing, especially if you want to import a lot of different videos for testing purposes. You need to take care of the resolution, the codec and the size of the video file, in order to make it suit your specific requirements. Furthermore you might not even have access to a video or image file at all and just want to test some media in your sketch. That’s where the Processing ScreenCapturer library comes in quite handy."

"The ScreenCapturer library for Processing enables you to capture any part of your screen and include this capture into your Processing sketch as image or video. This way you can try out video or image input in your Processing sketch without having to change the video/image import lines in your source code and don’t have to worry about problems regarding resolution, codec etc. Using this tool you can simply play a video in your browser or from your hard drive and move the ScreenCapturer window on top of your video and access everything inside this window frame from your Processing sketch. ScreenCapturer also allows you to take screenshots of certain areas of your desktop at stated intervals that could be useful for time laps videos for example." - Onformative

View code and project page here

reël, 2011

"As an experiment, we wanted to investigate in the different visual forms, the process of sorting can have. Each sorting algorithm reveals its particular strategy as a unique pattern. We took a row of pixels of a photograph and sorted the pixels by their color value. Since Processings color object is actually a number, they are perfect to be ordered. It worked well with grays, but revealed an unintuitive sorting of the colors. While they are ordered mathematically, one expects the gradients to be different.

In the next step we took each pixelrow from top to bottom, scanning and sorting image. This way a certain rythm of color hues, brightness and darkness is added to the sorting processes. Each animation has a duration if 720 frames, since 720 rows were sorted from top to bottom. We like the idea of translating the image dimension into the time. The next step would be to think about how the image has to look like, to create a certain rythm, and in the end maybe a story." - Onformative

www.onformative.com

Alpha-ville EXCHANGE 1 features a Day Programme packed with presentations, talks and social events alongside a music programme in the evening for attendees to network and enjoy. Work will be presented across: motion graphics, graphic design, illustration, interaction design, generative design, digital and software art, mixed media art, data visualisation and more. Tickets available here.

wwwalpha-ville.co.uk

Paul Prudence

Apeiron and Cyclotone are some beautiful live A-V works created by Paul Prudence using different algorithmic strategies, check out more interesting generative pieces on his site. See more;

Apeiron [fragments], 2013

http://www.paulprudence.com/?p=331

"Apeiron explores the phase transitions and shape transmutations of a set of complex nested spherical harmonic forms modulated by sound. The apeiron, central to the cosmological theory created by Anaximander in the 6th century BC, means limitless, infinite, or indefinite. Anaximander believed that infinite worlds are generated from apeiron and then are destroyed there according to the principle of genesis-decay." - Paul Prudence.

Cyclotone [intro], 2012
http://www.paulprudence.com/?p=337

"Cyclotone cross-wires sound and video material to create multi-modalities using a variety of algorithmic strategies, further synergies are created by employing associative, metaphorical and perceptual bindings between the visual and sonic domains. The work takes conceptual cues from cyclotrons and particle accelerators and is inspired to commemorate the first wave of Russian cosmonauts who conquered space physically as well as the artists of the Constructivist movement who conquered space conceptually." - Paul Prudence.

THIRTY THREE by Nils Völker

Thirty Three, 2013 by Nils Völker_

"The intensity and direction of the waves are determined by the actual tides at the harbor of Le Havre which is the subject of Claude Monet's painting "Impression, soleil levant" from 1872 and which gave rise to the name of the Impressionist movement.

Approximately every six hours, when the water level reaches its highest or lowest point, the wavelike movement of the installation slows down until it restarts towards the opposite direction. Also the intensity of the waves changes from day to day, according to the height of the tides at that time." - Nils Völker. See more;

Thirty Three is a site specific installation for a solo exhibition inside the Eglise du Vieux St-Sauveur in Caen curated by David Dronet, Station Mir within the frame of "Festival Normandie Impressionniste". The exhibition runs until 1st September 2013 and is open from Wednesday until Sunday, 15:00 till 19:00.

Making of

mylar, cooling fans, pvc, wood, custom made electronics and programming - approx. 17 x 1.5 x 2 m 

Yoichiro Kawaguchi

Some great computer animated works I hadn't seen yet from Yoichiro Kawaguchi using his unique style through his "GROWTH Model", a model based on growth algorithm, a self-organizing method to give form to one's rich imagination or to develop one's formative algorithm of a complex life form. See more info about Yoichiro Kawaguchi and his work process on this previous post. See more;

Origin, 1985

Embryo, 1988

Flora, 1989

Composed by Tod Machover, computer graphics by Yoichiro Kawaguchi. Based on the voice of Karol Bennett.

Gigalopolis, 1995

Cytolon, 2002

LAb [au]

m0za1que and Particle synthesis, two projects by LAb [au]

"m0za1que is a permanent artwork for ‘La Maison Mécatronique’ in Annecy-Le-Vieux, France. The main wall of the entrance hall 3.4m x 6m is divided in 26x15 squares. Each of the 390 tiles is motorised by a linear actuator with a range of 10cm. The individual control of the motion creates different three-dimensional reliefs of geometric patterns evolving following the logics of cellular automata.

During day these programmed motifs draw black shadows whereas in the evening they draw coloured shadows: The illumination by three light-projectors in primary colours of red, green, and blue leads to a global white illumination of the wall but the tiles’ shadows appear in the secondary colours of light. These coloured surfaces appear and disappear according to the tiles’ movement.The artwork relates motion with colour through the phenomena of light; while it’s mechanic and electronic system is exemplary for the very function of the building." See more;

m0za1que, 2012

Video here.

"The resulting mosaic can be compared to the electro-magnetic functioning of a memory slot in computation logics. The-so called 'place holder', having here the size of the matrix of tiles, can be filled with binary data and where this magnetic action leads in the installation also to physical motion. Information emerges not only out of the binary state but out of the relative position of the tile in the matrix. What in terms of computer logics is referred to as sequential data becomes here spatial data.


When no data activates a tile, the rigorous absolutely white surface is nothing but emptiness: zero is flat and white or pure light. When tiles are activated shadows outline their sharp-edged square shape, one is dark or no light. This transposition of the operating modes of the installation to the binary logic of computer memory is the origin of the project name 'm0za1que'. In this manner the installation gives the inherent computation logics a proper esthetic both on the level of its physical realisation and on its kinetic behavior." - LAb [au]

Particle synthesis, 2011

Video here.

"The project ‘particle synthesis’ started from the idea of combining 3D particle engines with granular sound synthesis, a research mainly motivated by the possible convergence of visual, sonic and spatial parameters processed in real time within electronic space. Both technologies are considering a shape, a form or a sound as the result of many combined elementary particles which would be individually neither visible nor audible. In computer graphics the tiny graphic elements are named ‘particles’ whereas in granular synthesis many names exist for the sonic ones such as ‘sonel’, ‘sonic quanta’... The very broad notion of particle as it can be applied to sonic and visual elements has been retained for the project name as ‘synthesis’ in reference to the way sound is processed. 

The hexagonal shape of the installation translates these sonic and spatial specificities: six networked computers, each rendering 60 degrees of the 3d scene, are boxed in a transparent Plexiglas case also including a speaker. These boxes have the shape of a stage monitor and are placed next to each other on the ground to constitute the hexagonal ring. The speakers and screens are oriented towards the center of the installation offering the visitor inside the ring an immersive and ‘spatialised’ experience whereas the ‘external’ view rather gives a complete vision, an overview, of the setting. This principle is also present in the design of the hardware, from outside the spectator see through the transparent box the ‘stripped’ electronics whereas from the inside only the screen image remains visible. In this manner the specific shape and design of the installation initializes the viewer to the project specific spatial, sonic and technological setting and invites him to enter the installation. Once the spectator has taken the engagement to enter the installation he takes part of the visual and sonic space and as such the spectators’ ‘act’ shifts the statue of the installation from an object (external perception) to a space (internal perception)." - LAb [au]    

 

Manfred Mohr

Here are some amazing experiments made by Mandred Mohr back in 1973.  He was invited by the CEO of La Companie Generale de Micromatique (a data storage and preservation company, which specialized in micro films) to experiment on their brand new machine DATAGRAPHIX 4460 to make computer animations. Along 4 years Mandred Mohr created these great studies geometric forms despite the process of was extremely slow at that time. See more;

Update: there's an interesting interview with Manfred Mohr at The White Review, where Manfred talks about the beginning of his carrier, earliest computer drawings and animations and also how difficult was for people to understand (his) computer based works as art in the 70's. See here. (thanks for the tip Lawrence Lek)

Cubic Limit, 1973-1974

"A single large cube, with solid edges, rotates in 3-D. As it rotates, it slowly breaks up into 25 embedded cubes each starting at the same center point but moving slowly towards their positions on a 5x5 grid. At the same rate, they are shrinking in size so that they fit onto the 5x5 grid as non-overlapping cubes.." more info about Cubic Limit here.

Square Roots, 1972-1973

"The earlier 16mm film (around 4 min), 'Square Roots' (1972-1973), was my first attempt to make a computer movie. I abandoned this short film because I felt it was too narrative. Subsequently I made the more abstract film 'Cubic Limit' (above). Nevertheless, although unedited, this is a short amusing film which has some of the 2-D elements which I later used in 'Cubic Limit' in 3-D." 

Transformation I, 1972-1973

"This short 16mm film (around 1 1/2 minutes) is 'Transition I' (1972-1973). As an inauguration gift, I transformed a sketch of the new city hall into the coat of arms of my hometown Pforzheim. Images from this film are published in the book: Pforzheim 1973"

Transformation Study, 1972

"This very short footage (around 1/2 minute) from 1972 is a study of a cube transforming to random points and back."

Complimentary Cubes, 1973-1974

"This footage 'Complimentary Cubes' (around 5 1/2 minutes), from 1973 - 1974, was originally written for the film "Cubic Limit" but was not used in the film. It shows 2 sequences of all the combinations of 2 rotating cubes, one with 'n' edges and the other with '12 minus n' edges. Images from this film were published in the catalog "Cubic Limit", 1975."

via | VIDEO CIRCUITS

cyclo.id

"Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai both work at the cutting-edge of contemporary electronic music and sound art. In 1999, the two artists initiated the joint project cyclo., which is devoted to the visualization of sound. In their shared work, they generate new hybrid forms of audiovisual art and expand the possibilities of digital technology.

The project's first publication is cyclo.id, a book and included CD-ROM that offer a multimedia and interactive documentation of the audiovisual material that Nicolai and Ikeda have collected, researched, and created since they began working together. The featured images are formed by the metering of sound bits that have been selected by the artists with meticulous care according to their acoustic and illustrative potential." -  Gestalten. See more;

It's posible to buy cyclo.id at Gestalten

Images from the book courtesy Gestalten, click on them to enlarge.

This is a nice video/talk where Carsten Nicolai speak about his work and about another previous good book he made while ago, called Grid Index, the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems.