Onion Skin by Olivier Ratsi

"Onion Skin is a new immersive installation by Olivier Ratsi, an artist on the AntiVJ visual label. The first stage in the Echolyse project, which will give birth to several variations around the same concept, Onion Skin is made up of a physical dimension - a module of two walls, positioned at right angles - augmented by a projection and a 5.1 sound broadcast. 

Onion Skin is a graphical work about the re-composition of time and space through a game of perspectives, both of the exhibition space itself and that of the projection canvas. Built around a progressive structure, made up of 4 parts lasting 14 minutes in total, the piece plays on the principle of repetition and scale to create a physical and hypnotic experience that opens doors onto the hidden and untouchable. 

The whole experience of the installation is based on a very specific point of view. A precise position from which a new dimension is revealed to the audience by anamorphosis. The simple geometric elements ("peelings") that seemed to be flat at first suddenly start delimiting a new space. The illusion of a new dimension within the installation slowly appears as the onion skins seem to be leaving their physical surface behind." - AntiVJ. See more;

Evolution Of Silence by Matthias Lohscheidt

Evolution Of Silence, 2013, an interactive sound-installation by Matthias Lohscheidt.

"The work »Evolution Of Silence« portrays a virtual world populated by artificial creatures. Each creature creates a tone defined by its DNA, and is visually represented by a ray of light inside a holographic projection. The population of these creatures evolves steadily in an evolutionary algorithm. The virtual world provides an inaudible key as an environmental condition. The more the tone of a creature fits the key, the louder its tone sounds, the stronger and broader its ray of light is, the more attractive it is to the other creatures and the longer it lives. Thus, it can produce many offspring by mating other creatures. Deviant tones however are quiet, have a very thin ray of light and die relatively quickly.

This way, the population inside the world evolves from a disharmonic and chaotic soundscape to a harmonic structure, fitting more and more to the key provided by the environment. After two to three minutes the environment key changes randomly, and the soundscape immediately becomes chaotic again. The population will adapt to this new environment over the period of several generations." - Matthias Lohscheidt. See more;

"The visitor can influence the evolutionary process by touching the rays of lights belonging to the creatures and thus “feeding” them. If the weak, quiet creatures with deviant, disharmonic tones, a thin ray of light and imminent death are touched or “fed”, they immediately become strong and loud. Thus, they are much more attractive to the other creatures and can produce many offspring. So the process of harmonising controlled by the evolutionary algorithm will slow down and be complemented with disharmonies.

»Evolution Of Silence« is the result of a series of experiments where I applied evolutionary algorithms to the emergent generation of sounds. Following JOHN CAGE, »Silence« is interpreted as the occurrence of all sounds that arise inside an environment by the very existence of all beings and elements – without any intention associated with those sounds: The artificial beings of the virtual world don’t sound to fulfill a musical purpose, they just sound because they exist. Only the environment with its progressing evolutionary process judges every tone and sets it into a harmonic context. This context attributes an intention to every tone, that is however, only valid within this context." - Matthias Lohscheidt.

Technical Information

All software is written in Java based on the Processing-library. The sound is generated with SuperCollider, which is controlled by the java-application through the great SUPERCOLLIDER-CLIENT for Processing by Daniel Jones. The tracking has been realized with a Kinect and Daniel Shiffman’s OPENKINECT-LIBRARY.

List of all used libraries: TOXICLIBS by Karsten “toxi” Schmidt, DNA by André Sier, OPENKINECT by Daniel Shiffman, PROCESSING-SC by Daniel Jones, OSCP5 and CONTROLP5 by Andreas Schlegel, ANI by Benedikt Groß

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.

Shift by Media Lab

Shift, an interactive audio visual installation created by Media Lab in 2011. 

"Shift is an array of machines shifting bits and bytes informed by simple and highly repetitive algorithms. Shift pays attention to its environment through the ever-watchful eye of a built-in camera and responds to movement. Changes in state are expressed through audio and visual abstractions." See more;

"During the exhibition, the audience was able to interact with Shift through the build in web-camera of each individual computer. Activity sensed by the camera would result in visual and audible changes animating the audience to further explore the underlying system of the work through different forms of gestures. 

How did the software work? To get started, Andreas prepared a software template, a sketch, that would be used by each individual member of the project. By tweaking and changing parameters and the structure of the software code, new and different mutations of the initial program would emerge. We ended u choosing 20 variations to be displayed. In the next step interactivity was added to the sketches. Since each computer that we were using was equipped with a web camera, we added a code that would allow us to capture, analyze and translate the camera feed into an additional parameter for our sketches."

The algorithms are shaped by Andreas Schlegel, Benson Chong, Darrick Ma, Dhiya Md, Felix Sng, Marvin Liang, Mike Chen, Sid Lim.

Wind by Damian Stewart

Wind, 2008-2011 by Damian Stewart_
"Each presentation of Wind takes the form of a temporary intervention, constructed around a site-specific visual environment of objects that are moving in the wind, such as a tree or a field of tall grass. A video camera records images of this visual environment. The images are directed through a digital processing system that extracts fields of motion and mathematically transforms these into fields of sound. The fields of sound are in turn reproduced through loudspeakers placed within the original environment.

Heard and seen together, the sound fields and visual environment form a tight cybernetic feedback loop. The sound fields guide and enhance the viewer’s visual experience, focusing their visual attention toward particular kinds of visual motion. This strengthened visual experience guides and enhances the viewer’s sonic experience, focusing their sonic attention toward particular kinds of sonic motion. This feedback loop creates a strong interconnection between the visual and the sonic within the mind of the viewer, leading to momentary states of complete attention to the different senses, and an overall heightened awareness of the beauty that is present." - Damian Stewart. See more;

Wind: sound from motion (2008-2011)

Wind at aDA Symposium 06/2009

Wind at O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, 2008

Technical details

"The input from the camera (1) feeds into the computer vision processing system (2), which finds motion and converts it into a format useful for sound synthesis (3). In the existing prototype, the camera (1) is an external digital video camera that sends data to a laptop computer running software which handles (2) and (3). Sound signals produced from (3) are amplifier and dispersed using loudspeakers (4).These components are all housed in a portable enclosure and powered by a 12V rechargeable battery, allowing for exhibition in practically any environment or location."

Made with openFrameworks and Pure Data, with production completed during a New Interfaces for Performance  residency.

Simon Katan

Simon Katan combines electronic music, live animation, interaction, and social gaming to make software which creates musical odysseys through exploring animated worlds. In the following works into the post you can see how interesting and playful is the interaction while composing the music and the multiple different ways Simon creates to compose it through minimalist interfaces. See more;

Cube with Magic Ribbons, 2012

"Cube with Magic Ribbons is a computer visual and synthesised sound composition for live performance. The piece takes its title from a drawing of M.C.Escher which is rich with contradictory perspectives but it is also inspired by the wrapped spaces found in the two dimensional graphics of early computer games such as Asteroids and Pac-Man. It was created using a custom visual sequencer SoundCircuit, which rather than employing a conventional DAW layout, allows multiple virtual tape-heads to travel through a two-dimensional wrapped space along tracks that can be freely inter-connected. As the tape-heads travel through the resultant network, the topological layout of the tracks comes to directly influence the macro form of the music. Furthermore, as the piece unfolds the nature of this already confusing space reveals itself to be increasingly elastic and complex, yet inexorably intertwined with the musical form." - Simon Katan

What Is Life ?, 2012

"What Is Life ? is a computer visual and synthesised sound composition for live performance. The piece uses a custom visual sequencer called SoundLens which comprises an OpenFrameworks visual interface and an OSC controlled SuperCollider patch. These combine to imply an analogue between a simulated visual focal effect, reminiscent of a camera lens or microscope, and auditory depth of field. Into this world are placed multiple copies of a sound producing mechanical object.
Inspired by a coincidental similarity between certain arrangements of these objects and the double helix structure of DNA, the piece takes its title from the name of Erwin Schrödinger’s book in which he develops the concept of a complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms. Nevertheless, there is a deeper connection between title and piece in that it progresses solely through the copying and mutation of its own material." - Simon Katan

God Over Djinn, 2011

"God Over Djinn is a piece for live animation and synthesised sound composition that draws on our intuitive understanding of the physical world, as well as playing with ambiguities between scale and perspective in two-dimensional representation to create seemingly infinitely nested worlds of colliding objects.

The work was inspired by impossible worlds of M.C.Escher and Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach and is created using a custom built OpenFrameworks application called SoundNest with sound in SuperCollider." - Simon Katan

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]