I’ve spent most of this week in a beautifully decrepit building in Liverpool which houses a number of artists [pictures here]. Sarah Nicolls and I have been carrying out some experiments into the use of motors and other actuators to play the insides of various pianos. This is part of a larger research project into expanding (sometimes via destroying) pianos that Sarah’s undertaking. The software side of the system I’ve been building uses a combination of preset patterns and FFT based analysis to provide a method for the real-time manipulation of these patterns using sound rather than some kind of sensor or MIDI interface. The sound input and FFT analysis offers a way of skewing the preset patterns (routines which trigger specific motors in turn) with the sound they produce when stiking and plucking strings, creating a generative feedback system within the piano. This will eventually become a far less messy system that Sarah can use in performance and will generate patterns in response to her playing, but this is still in the early stages and a lot more work needs to be done on the analysis and pattern generation side of things. The results of the week have been quite pleasing, sometimes trance inducing, so below are a few short examples (just of the preset patterns).

It’s now back to the drawing board to figure out how to add a few solenoids and steppers to the system which is currently made up of various DC motors, as can be seen in the image above.

Three tiny clips from a week’s work:

Berlin is littered with building sites that are gradually filling in the city’s gaps. The familiar metal mesh fences that surround such sites are ubiquitous. There is, however, a subtle difference to those I’m used to seeing around Newcastle: the fences in Berlin are prepared, they are fitted with rattlers, folded metal sheets that bare the contractor’s logo. In the wind or in response to impact these rattling tags give the fences an increased sustain and ’sizzle’. This makes me wonder what additional preparations could be added in order to make use of such frameworks as an audible addition to the city…
Listen (stereo, headphones work well):

Tuned City - Between sound and space speculation is an exhibition and conference project planned for July 01.-05. 2008 in Berlin which proposes a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic.

The project draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space within the architecture and urban planning discourse–as well as its strategies and working methods–into the context of sound art. This expanded discussion reenforces the potential of the spatial and communicative properties of sound as a tool and means of urban practice.

At the foundations of this event are artists’ works and theoretical approaches which examine in a critical and sensitive way the given urban and architectural situations alongside their resulting socio-political implications, that re-use existing spaces or that conceive and open new spaces.

A dialogue will be built at the intersection of both disciplines which traces out the complex relations and interactions of space-sound, both presenting and testing new strategies, methods, possibilities and potentials of sound work within the artistic and applied context.

Tuned City is structured in two main segments – symposium and site-specific installations.

On the individual days the symposium will approach the topic from five different theoretical and spatial perspectives. Spaces built for the production and reception of sound or acoustically flawed or impossible spaces, public and semi-public urban space, finished and planned spaces, wasteland or cultivated spaces, indoors and outdoors – the chosen venues correspond with the individual topic of the day and offer plastic illustration and demonstration. Tuned City will try to break down the conventional conference format and to catalyse the discussion via the space in a mixture of academic talk, artistic presentation, performances, reports from working practice, demonstrations, and walks.

The five days will be accompanied by a dense workshop programme and a performance programme corresponding with the individual topics.

For the programme structure see dates.

Little Helpers will be installed in various sites for the duration of the Tuned City festival. I had planned to attend the festival even before I was asked to take the Little Helpers over, as many of the people presenting work fall within the focus of my PhD research (Edwin van der Heide, Brandon LaBelle, Mark Bain, Barry Blesser…). The festival’s focus on sound-space is of particular importance to the work I’m doing at the moment, in particular its intensive and extensive (or extimate to borrow a Lacanian phrase) properties. In my current and admittedly speculative work there is an emphasis on the impact of the former, intensive sound-spaces, upon behaviour and its role in constituting a mode of environmental interaction. I’m hoping to develop exactly what I mean by this over the coming summer months and will no doubt post excerpts up here from time to time. The approach taken to sound-spaces by the festival and its associated artists is of particular importance for its engagement with auditory environments and their contingency with regard to an immediate environmental infrastructure, an approach that (thankfully) problematizes what could loosely be referred to as an electro-acoustic approach to sound spatialization. There’s obviously at lot more to say on this, hopefully I’ll have it a little clearer in my head once I’m back from Berlin and have had a chance to let the dust settle into something resembling a coherent argument. Bearing all this in mind the programme of artists and speakers is particularly exciting.

Please join us at Culture Lab (Newcastle University) on the 25th Junefor the ‘Sketching Interactions’ workshop. The workshop brings togethernoted academics and practitioners from the North East and beyond todiscuss tools and methods for sketching and designing interactiveapplications and products. The day will consist of talks, demos,performances and discussions. We hope that the event will provide aforum for networking and to generate new ideas and projects. We’ll alsohave keynotes from William Gaver and Andy Boucher (Goldsmiths College)and Robert Young (Northumbria University School of Design) as well as ahost of talent from the worlds of art, music, design and computing.The event is sponsored by INSCAPE, a European Sixth Framework project tocreate a software tool for authoring interactive stories. This meansthat it is completely FREE (including drinks and lunch) and open to all,however, places are very limited so please book now. Contactmartyn.dade-robertson@ncl.ac.uk for more information or to book a placeby visiting http://www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab/embed/inscape/ and fillingin the details. 

Last week I had the pleasure of playing with Paolo Angeli again. He’s a fantastic musician to play with, incredibly responsive. We recorded a piece which will be released some time later in the year. I’ll post something up here once it’s available.

For the recording session I played the drums with him Paolo and David de la Haye (the other half of Eyes). I also played live with him and Adam Parkinson on Wednesday evening. Adam and I were doing some live sampling and processing of his guitar. I was slightly worried that our presence was going to be unnecessary, as the preparations he’s added to his guitar over the year give him access to such a wide range of sounds that I wasn’t sure what we could really add to it. There were some difficult moments in the set, which seemed to fall into three parts, but in the end things worked out nicely. Live coding isn’t the best approach to improvised music when you’re playing with a musician who has such immediate access to his sound source, but that’s what I’ve been performing with recently so I decided to stick with it. In the end I decided I could have done with some kind of interface, which I’m now working on. What I believe to best bits are compiled in a mix of the gig I’ve just finished. It’s available here: angMix.mp3 (22.7MB)
There are a few photos from the gig available here.

The reason for posting this now is more of a dorky/technical/SuperCollider issue. The project is in its infancy and there is lots of automation to be sorted out. For the purpose of testing the idea out I built an interface that allows me to control the bin shifting. For christmas I got Reas and Fry’s Processing book from my brother, only after working through it did I realise that I might be able to put GUI objects in an array and access their values via their index positions! The dorkyness of my excitement about this is accompanied by a hint of frustration at how obvious this must seem to someone with any decent schooling in programming. It was a real “of course!” moment, I need to read more programming books.

The result is a nicely dynamic system that allows me to create any number of synth modules (which set up the feedback loop and bin shifting) which simultaneously sets up the necessary buffers and GUI objects (sliders in this case). The sliders then control the bin shifting for each individual synth module. The reason for doing this is that I wanted one synth module to set the frequency of a feedback loop to that of the room’s primary resonant frequency and a number of others to set up feedback loops shifted to the value of a particular partial. The array based eureka moment means that I only have to specify how many modules I’d like and the rest is done for me (like I said, painfully obvious for some but a bit of a revelation for me).

Here’s how it looks and the code for anyone who might find this sort of thing useful.

s = Server.internal.boot;
s.boot;
s.quit;

(
SynthDef(\binshifter, { arg out=0, bufnum, shift = 1.6;
var in, chain;
in = AudioIn.ar(1);
chain = FFT(bufnum, in);
chain = PV_BinShift(chain, shift);
Out.ar(out, 0.5 * IFFT(chain).dup);
}).send(s);
)

(
n = 3; //Number of FFT Synths and related GUI stuff, set to 3 in image posted above.

w = GUI.window.new(”SPATIUM”, Rect(120, 120, 170, 120)).front;
w.view.decorator = FlowLayout( w.view.bounds );
a = Array.new(n);
m = [0.25, 4].asSpec;
n.do({ |i|
s.sendMsg(”/b_alloc”, i, 1024);

i+1.do({

a.add( GUI.slider.new(w, Rect(20, 10, 160, 32))
.action_({

s.sendMsg(”/n_set”, (1000 + i), \shift, m.map(a[i].value));
(i.asString ++ “: ” ++ m.map(a[i].value)).postln

}));
});

Synth.new(\binshifter, [\bufnum, i], s, \addToHead);

});
)

First, a little information on why this grabbed me: The theoretical context for my recent work has more than a few dark, shadowy corners. One such corner is where the Bergsonian critique of spatiality lingers and is developed by Deleuze. I’ve yet to follow up some references suggested to me by Levi (as I’ve been on a soldering binge for a while) but either way a certain suspicion has formed regarding the synonymity of architecture and hylomorphism. Where spatiality is understood in strictly extensive terms, in the sense of things being-there, it is instrumental in the construction and maintenance of identities, that is to say, as spatial multiplicity which when divided retains its identity. I find the discrepancy between spatial and intensive multiplicites interesting, and this is where I need to get stuck into Bergson, as when I think of spatiality in Deleuzean and more idiomatic terms I tend to think of spatio-temporal dynamisms as they appear in Deleuze’s earlier texts (The Method of Dramatization in particular) and also because this seems more attuned to space-time rather than a split between temporal (durational) and spatial multiplicities. Like I say, I need to read up on Bergson but that’s not going to happen for a while, so speculation will have to do for now. The metaphorical use of architecture, abstracted from its purely industrial and commercial practice, has been of particular use to a wide range of artists and writers working with sound, Brandon LaBelle is a excellent example of this. With this work in mind, as well as the influence of architectural practice and theory upon it, an understanding of architecture built around a critique that limits it to a purely extensive practice of the organisation of matter, the maintenance of form, spatial identity, its subordination to durational and intensive multiplicity, seems overly constraining and limited to a commonplace notion of architecture in an almost industrial or commercial sense. Alternative practices within architecture and related theory (Jane Rendell for example) break this open into a much more interesting and informative field. I’ll come back to this once I’ve got onto what I find so fascinating about Rahm’s work.

Steensons writes:

Swiss architect Philippe Rahm … told an audience at Princeton last week, “When you create a space, you create a climate.” His architecture is environmental in a literal sense: he creates ecosystems and climates: by changing variables like temperature, UV light and oxygen, he experiments with new types of spaces that might be recreated…

Hormonorium, the Swiss Pavilion in the 2002 Venice Biennale, manipulated levels of UV light and oxygen in the room in order to shift hormonal levels within its visitors, making them feel less fatigued and more stimulated. 528 fluorescent tubes under clear plexiglass construct the floor, and illuminate so brightly, they make the boundaries of the room disappear. The flooding of UV light creates a decrease in melatonin level, waking up and turning on the visitors. Bringing the oxygen level down to that usually found at 3000 meters stimulates the production of a hormone that increases red blood cell count and improving physical capability. The room changes the physiology of its participants…

Rahm noted how writers like Jules Verne noted how the invention of streetlighting completely changed the experience of night and day. Diurnisme reverses this effect, shifting time by recreating the night during the day, with its many yellow-orange lamps. The effect works on melatonin production, which operates on the blue and red wavelengths of the eye but not the yellow. The room played 18 Diurnes, composed by Rahm as an inversion to nocturnes.

It’s been noted, in some of the bits and pieces I’ve found online today, that Rahm has a meteorological approach to architecture: the creation of dynamic ecosystems that make an impression upon the physiology of its inhabitants. This is architecture projecting intensity rather than maintaining extensity, woking upon embodied spatium rather than communicating form. This intensive approach, working upon the very matter of beings rather than their spatial organisation, seems to go against the critique of spatiality that Levi has flagged up. This method of architectural practice sees the creation of an energetic environment, an informative affective and individuating bubble that resonates more with Deleuze’s ‘Method of Dramatization’ than the outline of spatial critique that is in some ways haunting aspects of my work at the moment. I’m thinking of the environments constructed by Rahm as informative in the sense that are affective spaces working upon the very fabric of the body, eroding the boundary between occupant and host site, opening the individual to a more overt interactive and processual individuation. This intensive projection is nonetheless architectural, a built and meticulously designed environment, but it presents itself as a primarily intensive practice Such an architecture finds its site in embodied intensity, a projected site that undoubtedly relies upon an extensive framework to support it, but it occupies and distorts such a framework. As Jane Rendell has pointed out, architecture is always already an occupied territory, occupied by architecture itself; architectural space renders us and our movement subject to a spatial hierarchy. Rahm’s intensive environments seem to occupy and eat away at such extensive frameworks, usurping its spatial hierarchy and imposing another. This is a practice that seems to be embedded in a certain environmental noise, taking a route to the conditioning of extensive behaviour through intensive processes, providing a meteorological, chemical, etc., … , catalyst for the manipulation of environmental experience and interaction. Here architectural intent is filtered through the individuals that occupy it, distorting it at the point of its realization. This is why Steenson’s title is interesting, ‘Manipulating Environments’, suggesting the manipulation of individual physiology and experience as much as the strictly spatial and environmental aspects of the constructed site.

My intrigue in Rahm’s approach, and the inclination to speculate on what the work’s doing, is driven by current thinking and practice (my own and that of others) working with spatial sound. The application of architectural theory towards are more nuanced interpretation of sound installation, environmental sound, auditory environments and so on, is a useful one. Sound is, however, a more dynamic and illusive material than that commonly and reductively associated with architectural practice, yet it can be seen to impact upon spatial and interactive experience in sufficiently similar ways to warrant making such comparisons. Rahm’s practice, the creation of intensive and manipulative environments that distort and transform a host site, gets close to some of the ways I’ve been thinking about the construction of sonic fields and their impact upon those that pass through them.

Here’s what went in the programme:

The performance makes use of a variety of open circuits into which the body and performance space can enter, activating a conductive auditory field. Gaps in home made electronic devices connect the flesh to the flow of electricity, the sonic properties of the performance space are drawn into the circuit and mixed with the material being processed by incomplete code which is developed and manipulated during performance. This circuit of interconnectivity produces rich textural sound fields which are subject to aleatoric and algorithmic decision making that provides a framework for the reorganization, manipulation and spatialization of sound.

I used a homemade crackle box as part of the performance. To prevent ruining my spine by carrying an audio interface and mixer to gigs (my computer is so old that it doesn’t have a line in) I’ve resorted to sticking the crackle box speaker to the computer’s inbuilt mic with gaffer tape. For anything else this would just sound awful but the ‘recorded through a crisp packet’ quality seems to suit the crackle box.

When I got to the gig two of the contacts had snapped. Luckily there was a leatherman handy to rectify the situation. One day I’ll get round to putting this on something more permanent.

It was a good gig in a recovered church which had fantastic resonance. The high point for me was Joseph Kudirka’s set using two cheep radios to receive and diffuse the crunchy yet rich noise being broadcast from his computer.

1.9MBReset buttons need adding to the circuit boards as occasionally there are issues starting them up, and the power cables keep getting ripped out so I need to find a way to stop that happening without having to resort to some awful maplins housing. The code also needs changing a little so the motors, when triggered, start slowly and then pick up speed reaching a maximum level and then slow down to a stopping point again, a kind of mechanical fade in and fade out rather than just turning on or off.

int incomingByte = 0; // for incoming serial data
int transistorPin = 2;
int ultraSoundSignal = 7; // Ultrasound signal pin
int val = 0;
int ultrasoundValue = 0;
int timecount = 0; // Echo counter
int ledPin = 13; // LED connected to digital pin 13
int waitTime;void setup() {
//Serial.begin(9600); // opens serial port, sets data rate to 9600 bps
pinMode(transistorPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
timecount = 0;
val = 0;
waitTime = 0;
pinMode(ultraSoundSignal, OUTPUT); // Switch signalpin to output

// Send low-high-low pulse to activate the trigger pulse of the sensor

digitalWrite(ultraSoundSignal, LOW); // Send low pulse
delayMicroseconds(2); // Wait for 2 microseconds
digitalWrite(ultraSoundSignal, HIGH); // Send high pulse
delayMicroseconds(5); // Wait for 5 microseconds
digitalWrite(ultraSoundSignal, LOW); // Holdoff

// Listening for echo pulse

pinMode(ultraSoundSignal, INPUT); // Switch signalpin to input
val = digitalRead(ultraSoundSignal); // Append signal value to val
while(val == LOW) { // Loop until pin reads a high value
val = digitalRead(ultraSoundSignal);
}

while(val == HIGH) { // Loop until pin reads a high value
val = digitalRead(ultraSoundSignal);
timecount = timecount +1; // Count echo pulse time
}

//Writing out values to the serial port:

ultrasoundValue = timecount; // Append echo pulse time to ultrasoundValue
/*
serialWrite(’A'); // Example identifier for the sensor
printInteger(ultrasoundValue);
serialWrite(10);
serialWrite(13);
*/

// ***** Motor Stuff *****

//digitalWrite(transistorPin, LOW); // turn motor off.
//digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);

if (ultrasoundValue < 2600) { // Set activation threshold

/* for loop adds a “tail” to the motors activation, so that movement continues
for a short time after it has been activated.
remove for loop to have direct maping of ultrasoundValue onto motor speed. */

for (int i=0; i < random(60, 140); i++) {
digitalWrite(transistorPin, LOW); // turn motor off.
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(random(5, 25));
digitalWrite(transistorPin, HIGH); // turn motor on;
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay(10);
}
}

else {
digitalWrite(transistorPin, LOW); // turn motor off.
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(100);
}
}

As soon as the weather picks up I intend to try them out on a hedge in Fenham and on a few lamp posts, bus stops and railings around Newcastle. Documentation of the project will be periodically updated and made available here.