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.

Cloud Face by Shinseungback Kimyonghun

Cloud Face, 2012 by Shinseungback Kimyonghun_
"Human sees figures in clouds: animals, faces and even god. This kind of perception also appears in computer vision. Face-detection algorithms sometimes find faces that are not. It is because human’s knowledge of a face and understanding of human vision mechanisms affect the development of the computer vision.

‘Cloud Face’ is a collection of cloud images that are recognized as human face by a face-detection algorithm. It is a result of computer’s vision error, but they look like faces to human eyes, too. This work attempts to examine the relation between computer vision and human vision." - Shinseungback Kimyonghun. See more;

Few days ago onformative in collaboration with Christian Loclair presented a similar concept using face detection algorithm to detect human faces on Google Maps, check it out here.

Floe

Floe is a kinetic glass sculpture created by four artists and designers from different backgrounds and professions from the Royal College of Art, London; Lida Marinkova (mixed media and textiles), Ozgun Kilic (animation), Oluwaseyi Sosanya (innovation design engineering), Pierre Paslier (innovation design engineering).

"The piece is inspired by formations and movement found in nature, it embodies the shape and movement of ice drifting on the surface of the North Atlantic. The glass structure is combined with a simple wave movement and light bringing life to the piece. An interactive element was essential to the project; the audience influences the movement and light intensity with their presence." See more;

"This is the first prototype of an on going project, using a continuous rotation servo motor(+arduino), a distance sensor to track the presence of the audience in the environment changing the speed of rotation accordingly. A single beamer as a light source adds another layer to the whole - that being random shapes created on the walls as a result of light rays reflecting from/breaking through extremely thin glass layers."

The process started off with Pierre Paslier’s experimentation with kinetic structures using mdf and manual movement, check it out in the two videos [1] [2]

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

Flowpi

Can't wait to receive this limited printed publication (100 copies) featuring the great algorithmic work by Jonathan McCabe, who has worked with Bryce Wilner to make together this piece called Flowpi, which title makes reference to a combination of a "flow" and a pattern forming system named after the pomacanthus imperator fish. The book contains thirty-one new compositions by Jonathan McCabe. To see more info and how this generative and organic texture really flows check out this previous post about Flowpi. See more;

The book's pages were printed by Sunrise Digital on Indigo Text 80# paper. It's  available in paperback only, it costs 20$ and it's possible to buy it here.

this is not a place by Michael Manning

Love this piece by Michael Manning, made for The Eternal Internet Brotherhood 2013. See the work and interact with here.

Jordan Belson 5 Essential Films

Jordan Belson 5 Essential Films is another film I rented while ago which features 5 amazing works by filmmaker and artist Jordan Belson who created spiritually oriented abstract films richly woven with cosmological imagery, exploring consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself. See more;

Here are some still images from each piece. This is a great film to have, which is on several sites online around 25-30€. 

Information courtesy Centerforvisualmusi.org where you will find more about Jordan Belson and  this DVD.

Allures (1961)

"An early (8 min) masterpiece of Non-Objective Cinema “I think of Allures as a combination of molecular structures and astronomical events mixed with subconscious and subjective phenomena – all happening simultaneously. the beginning is almost purely sensual, the end perhaps totally nonmaterial. It seems to move from matter to spirit in some way.” “…it took a year and a half to make, pieced together in thousands of different ways….Allures actually developed out of images I was working with in the Vortex Concerts.” (Jordan Belson, quoted in Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood, p. 160-162). The soundtrack is a collaboration with Henry Jacobs. Allures was preserved with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation."

Samadhi (1967)

"Samadhi (6 min) evokes the ecstatic state achieved by the meditator where individual consciousness merges with the Universal. “I hoped that somehow the film could actually provide a taste of what the real experience of samadhi might be like.” (from Scott MacDonald’s interview with Belson in A Critical Cinema 3). Belson adds “It is primarily an abstract cinematic work of art inspired by Yoga and Buddhism. Not a description or explanation of Samadhi.”

Light (1973)

"Light (8 min) is based on the continuity of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is a ride through space and light. This is the last film for which Belson composed his own soundtrack."

Fountain of Dreams (1984) 

"A bold sychronisation to the Transcendental music of Franz Liszt."

Epilogue (2005) 

"By way of pure Visual Music experience, the Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian Institution) commissioned a major new work from abstract film artist Jordan Belson, who distilled 60 years of visionary sound and images into a twelve minute videofilm, synchronised to a symphonic tone poem “Isle of the Dead” by the great lyric composer Sergei Rachmaninoff."

Matthew Brandt

Next April 4 Highlight Gallery will present Water & Polaroid, a solo exhibition by Matthew Brandt until next May 18, 2013. Into the post you can also find Lakes and Reservoirs, a previous series from 2011 which follows the same experimental process in connection with water from lakes.

"For Water & Polaroid, Matthew Brandt presents three bodies of work based on the manipulation of photographic emulsion. To create the works in the exhibition that involve Water, inspired by early landscape photography of the American West, Brandt incorporates the subject of the image into its manipulation. At its most elaborate, Brandt’s process involves using water from an actual waterfall he has photographed to rig an artificial waterfall that pours over the printed image, creating streaks of color that drip from the emulsion. At its most direct, he soaks prints in water drawn from their subject lakes.

Nymph Lake, one piece from Brandt’s Lakes and Reservoirs series, demonstrates this process. Out in the field, Brandt takes with him two key tools: a camera and a five-gallon plastic jug. “The camera is to take an image of the lake or reservoir, while the jugs are to take some of the actual lake,” he explains. Upon return to his studio, Brandt prints selected images, then empties the collected water into a large tray and submerges the C-print of the lake directly into itself. Finally, he waits, as the water in the image slowly breaks down the image itself over the course days, weeks, or even months." - Highlight Gallery. See more;

"In contrast to the external manipulations in his Water series, Brandt’s Polaroids explore the material of the photograph’s own substrate. By distressing the chemical emulsion of the Polaroid and manipulating the development process by hand, Brandt creates vertical color reliefs that mimic the structure of a waterfall in their flowing movement.

To complete the exhibition, Brandt will present for the first time a new body of work titled Water Falls, a series of light boxes that emphasize the extensive range of properties attainable through manipulated emulsion. For Mystic Falls, Brandt prints four separate color duraclear transparencies in cyan, magenta, yellow and black (cmyk), then subjects them to degradation in their own water for up to four weeks at a time. Using his artificial waterfall mechanism to interject the traditional cmyk colored layering process, Brandt creates a range of tonalities across multiple impressions of a single image of Mystic Falls, and then illuminates their every detail." - Highlight Gallery.

Water & Polaroid 

Lakes and Reservoirs, 2011