TEAM “It Does Not Matter”

Design Proposal

My group and I decided to create an installation that aims to represent sound and visuals combined. We plan to create a visual optical illusion to encourage the user to interact with the space around them and hopefully help them be aware of their surroundings more than that actually should.

Concept/Ideas

Our initial idea was one of a shock and awe method whereby we planned to suspend a fake brick from the ceiling and drop it down onto an unsuspecting passer-by below. This motion of the brick, combined with a sound of something falling (fweeeee!!!) would make the viewer look up and jump out of the way. The aim of this was to make the user wary of their surroundings and also to initiate a shock response out of them.

This idea quickly fell to pieces, as one, it would prove to be a safety hazard, two, the costs of building and obtaining the materials to enable the rigging of motors and fake brick were too much and finally there were no suitable places for us to hang this project up where it would not be seen.

After much discussions from the members of the group, we searched the internet, hopefully to get some inspiration from artists. The two artists that stood out for us were Liu Bolin and Julian Beever.

Liu Bolin, known for his work where he paints himself to fit the background of a scene that he is trying to photograph, fell into our category of the awe. We had a look at a few more of his photos and realised how detailed and intricate Liu was painted to blend into his surroundings. In fact it was so good that if you did not take a second look, you would not realise he was there. To put it simply, we definitely wanted to go with the whole camouflage effect.

Julian Beever was another inspiration. He is known for his very realistic 3D drawings on pavements and sidewalks. What we all liked about this idea was how we could incorporate a 3D image to a certain location and give it depth to no matter what angle it was viewed at or photographed from.

Combining what we learnt about these artists to our ideas on our installation, we decided to use the steps in the DAB building to install our project.

We decided that we would like to create an optical illusion on the stairs that we were working on, to give the stairs a sense of unevenness and make people wary of the way the walk up and down the stairs, but also for them to relaize that once they take the first step, they realize that the stairs are straight and they should have no problem walking up and down them.

In terms of sound, we decided that whatever picture that was to be decided to be placed on the stairs would reflect what sound would be designed for the project.

Installation

Now that we had an idea and concept that we would all like to work on we started looking at the costs involved in making such a project.

The paper that we were ging to get for cutting and pasting the paper onto the stairs would come cheap, so would the double sided tape.

Because of safety issues that arose with our original idea of sticking stuff onto the top of stairs, we decided to move the sticking of objects to the front face of the stairs.

Roles Within The Group

Each one of the group members will be sharing the roles on the project, but I have unofficially been assigned as the group leader and decision maker since I did most of the initial conceptualization and brain storming.

Space/Size:

I've had John, one of our group members measure up the stairs and to our amazement, realized the not all of the stairs were of equal height. This would mean that when it comes to cutting and fabricating the heights of the paper, we would not be able to use a template based on one size but each piece would have to be fabricated.

Materials/Cost:

Since this project was relatively easy to achieve without much use of printing and photoshop, we only needed to contribute money for the buying of black paper and double sided tape. I'm providing a ream of white paper, as I had leftovers from another project I was working on.

Transportation:

There is not much transportation involved as everything is easy to carry individually

Possible Forseeable Problems

• Not lining up the bricks correctly to create the distorted optical illusion

• Spaces that we can use due to heavy human traffic along stairs

• Noisy stairwells due to distorting sounds that will be played during the installation

Dorkbot Sydney October meeting

P E O P L E   D O I N G   S T R A N G E   T H I N G S   W I T H   E L E C T R I C I T Y

What: “People doing strange things with electricity“
Where: Serial Space, 33 Wellington St Chippendale
When: Tuesday 26th October, 19:00 for a 19:30 “Speakoff”

PRESENTERS

BABABA INTERNATIONAL

Bababa International is a group of human-beings that are about to do something difficult at Locksmith Projects.

For this project they are planning to enter the world of convenience by transforming the gallery space into a large vending machine. With this machine they will attempt to mimic the vehement focus and skill for presentation of the vending industry. However, where they follow a commercial imperative, dispensing delicious and desirable food-items, we will be filling our machine with useful premonitions. This vending machine will be stocked with objects, articles, devices and items that are of the present, but that might be able to tell us something about what the future will be like.

Hopefully, if all goes well, using this vending machine will be an act of causal eavesdropping. We are also hoping that it will work

BALINT SEEBER

The Australia Geographical RadioFrequency Map is a web application that allows anyone to view, search and add to the visualised national RF landscape. At its core, RFMap is a mash-up that displays all static transmitter sites and assignment information (e.g. client & frequency) on a searchable map. Additional features include viewing inter-site links, rendering approximated antenna radiation patterns and filtering by a number of criteria.

During this Dorkbot presentation, I plan to unveil an exciting new layer of the map using a real-time data source. This will also be visualised separately in 3D (if all goes to plan). Think big, fast-moving and not attached to the ground…

MIRIAM CHATT

Miriam Chatt is in her 4th year studying philosophy and sculpture at Sydney University. She enjoys building machines and gadgets like pinhole cameras, light installations and drawing machines.

BE THERE AND BE A SQUARE! AND BEWARE! :D

Check the website for more details www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsyd

Email message received from Pia van Gelder
+61419164623
Electronic Media Artist  |  www.piavangelder.com  |  pia@piavangelder.com
Dorkbot-Syd "Overlord"  |  www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsyd  |  dorkbotsyd@dorkbot.org
Serial Space Director  |  www.serialspace.org

.........dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity..........
......................... http://dorkbot.org ...........................

Artists Talk: Moving Image Art by Malcolm Le Grice

Malcolm Le Grice will introduce a program of films and video, from 1 to 16 mins in duration, made between 1966 and 2009. Malcolm Le Grice started as a painter but began to make film and computer works in the mid 1960's. He was a founding member of the London Filmmakers Co-operative and has made works collaboratively with other artists and performers including Brian Eno.




Friday 5th November, 6 - 8pm
at Performance Space, Carriageworks,
245 Wilson Street, Everleigh NSW 2015.

Also check out 'Expanded Architecture' forum and screenings, and LOADS of other great events at Performance Space in November…

REFRACTION *27th of OCTOBER*

REFRACTION

Refraction is dedicated to the support, mentorship and development of student projects as they take their practice from the classroom to the community.

The project is curated by Emily McDaniel and Jordan Dorjee and supported by the UTS Sound Collective

Featuring:
THE GHOST OF 29 MEGACYCLES (MELB)
JOEL STERN (BRIS)
ATHROCYCLE
REUBEN HOLT

7.30pm, Wednesday 27th October 2010

Serial Space - 33 Wellington St, Chippendale

G H O S T S O F 2 9 M E G A C Y C L E S (MELB)
The Ghost of 29 Megacycles is a minimalist shoegaze project currently based in Melbourne. The band released their debut album, Love via Paper Planes on Sydney label Sound and Fury Records to critical acclaim. Their follow up mini album The Hummingbird Dream continues to explore their unique ambient sounds and abstract songwriting.
http://www.myspace.com/theghostof29megacycles

J O E L S T E R N (BRIS)
Joel Stern is a performer and producer of experimental music & sound, performing regularly both solo and in collaboration with a wide variety of artists around the world. Joel's performance collaboration with filmmaker Sally Golding, as Abject Leader, has seen the duo widely recognised as Australia's premier exponents of contemporary expanded cinema.
http://www.abjectleader.org/
http://www.myspace.com/joelstern

A T H R O C Y C L E
Athrocycle is a new collaborative project of Andrew Voet and Nick Beeby. Both have produced an expanse of eclectic electronic music and visual art both together and seperately for over 10 years. As Athrocycle they explore the potentials of chaos and the unexpected using circuit bent hardware and digital sound design, with a gameboy thrown in for good measure.
http://www.myspace.com/microstrobus
http://www.myspace.com/circuitsatanic

R E U B E N H O L T
Reuben Holt is a Sydney based sound artist, musician and composer. His live performances combine pastiche and found sounds with impressionistic sonic accompaniment. He is currently completing a Bachelor of Sound and Music Design at UTS.

Refraction is proudly supported by Sound Travelers and assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Graphics by Jade Cantwell

http://refractionsound.wordpress.com

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=152255931478737

Interactive Polymedia Pixel @ Media Architecture Biennale Vienna 2010

Designed by Kirsty Beilharz, M. Hank Haeusler, Sam Ferguson and Tom Barker.
Fabrication assisted by Rom Zhirnov and electronics with participation by students of Situated Media Installation Studio (UTS B. Sound and Music Design, B. Photography and situated Media)

Theme 2010: Urban Media Territories; the re-stratification of urban public spaces through digital media.

http://www.mediaarchitecture.org/biennale-2010-exhibition/

This research is an investigation into Urban Digital Media, a field that inhabits the intersection between architecture, information and culture in the arena of technology and building. It asks how contemporary requirements of public space in our everyday life, such as adaptability, new modes of communication and transformative environments that offer flexibility for future needs and uses, can be addressed by a new form of public display through the use of an interactive polymedia pixel and situated media device protocol.

The weakness of many current media façades and building-scale interactive installation environments lies in the dearth of quality creative content and its unresponsiveness by ignoring potential human factors, richness of locative situation and contextual interaction (Sauter, 2004). Media facades have matured from being 2D visual display to 3D voxel arrays for depicting static and moving images with a spatial depth dimension (Haeusler, 2009). As a consequent next step in this development, this research investigates a display that reacts empathetically to human interaction and is responsive to its urban digital media; to integrate multiple modalities; smart energy-saving; and enabling community engagement in urban digital media content, i.e. responsive and interactive sensing capability.

Seven attributes of the Polymedia Pixel that address the above-mentioned inadequacies of public displays:
(1) contextual responsiveness - to physical, environmental factors;
(2) interactive responsiveness - to human intervention and activity in the proximity;
(3) intelligence - smart controls that can adapt physical behaviour to suit conditions,
(4) multimodality - ability to communicate through non-visual channels, such as sound;
(5) sensing and communication - in order to sense/detect conditions of environment, human interaction and to be accessed by networked mobile devices;
(6) energy efficiency - optimising energy expenditure and capturing self-powering energy sources and
(7) open protocol for networked device controllers to receive communication from a wide variety of devices, enabling public access and interactive content, localized to physical context.

The following elements comprise the anatomy of a Polymedia Pixel:
(1) LED for producing the image;
(2) Speaker for transmitting sound;
(3) PV cell for energy production;
(4) Photo-sensor to react to its environment;
(5) Microprocessor to process data and information;
(6) Microphone to record sound;
(7) WiFi to transmit data wireless;
(8) Bluetooth for communicating between pixels[and external device interaction]. 

The prototype design was first reported in the following paper in Turkey:

‘Interactive Polymedia Pixel and Protocol for Collaborative Creative Content Generation on Urban Digital Media Displays’
by M. Hank Haeusler, Kirsty Beilharz, Tom Barker at the International Conference on New Media and Interactivity 28-30 April 2010, Istanbul. http://iletisim.marmara.edu.tr/newmedia/page/11/main-topics-of-the-conference

The Fabrication Process



Icosidodecahedron form 3D printed model by Matthias Hank Haeusler. A precision centred 3D print was made in order to generate mold.



Mold for casting silicone



Rom removing the delicate silicone structures while they are still somewhat malleable, not hardened. A further overnight sees them harden substantially and the material reaches full strength after about a week.



The final translucent structure, which will be trimmed. Acrylic pentagon ‘windows’ clip into the openings after the rigid plastic equator and electronics have been installed inside.

Hank’s book also at the Vienna exhibition: http://www.mediaarchitecture.org/media-facades-hank-haeusler/

Das Buch führt in die Terminologie der Medienarchitektur ein und erläutert im ersten Teil die Geschichte der Medienfassaden anhand weltberühmter Beispiele wie Times Square, New York, oder Centre Pompidou in Paris. This book explores the terminology, recent history and developments in Media Façades, showing famous examples from Times Square to the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

References

Haeusler, M. Hank Media facades – History, Technology, Content, avedition, Ludwigsburg 2009.

Sauter, Joachim, “Das vierte Format; Die Fassade als mediale Haut der Architektur”, Fleischmann, Monika; Renhard, Ulrike (Eds), Digitale Transformationen. Medienkunst als Schnittstelle von Kunst, Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, (Heidelberg: whois verlags und vertriebsgesellschaft, 2004).

Installation by Alison Anderson

Post about the exhibition at Riflemaker London from Paul Smith's blog

Heatherwick's design for the UK Pavilion at Shanghai

A nice post on Paul Smith's blog

SEAM 2010 - Interactive Art, Dance & Technology

SEAM 2010 Public Symposium: AGENCY and ACTION

15 & 16 OCTOBER
at Seymour Centre, Cnr of City Rd and Cleveland St, Chippendale, Sydney

Early bird bookings end 5pm Monday 4 Oct!

For bookings, please contact the Box Office at Seymour Centre.

If you’re interested in the cutting edge connection between dance, performance and technology, then take a look at what’s happening during SEAM 2010. The focus will be on Embodiment in Digitally Mediated Environments and includes a 2 day Symposium at the Seymour Centre (15 and 16 Oct), public talks and artist performances/ presentations by local and international Artists. The international artists include Igloo (Ruth Gibson, UK), Holger Deuter (DE), Frederic Bevilacqua, leader of Real Time Musical Interactions at the Institute for Music/Acoustic Research in Paris (FR) and Christian Ziegler (DE). The national artists include Gideon Obarzanek (Chunky Move), George Khut, John Sutton, Kathy Cleland, Lian Loke, Hellen Sky, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Scott McQuire, Paul Thomas, Mike Leggett, Vicki Van Hout, Garth Paine and Kate Richards amongst others.

Exhibitions include Christian Ziegler’s (DE) wald forest and Emio Greco/PCs Double Skin/ Double Mind installation.

Like the 2009 SEAM Symposium, held at Rushcutters Bay in September last year, this year’s Symposium will also include a unique mix of formal academic and practitioner presentations, forums and talks interspersed with live performance, exhibitions, interactive installations as a way of presenting the must up to date research available on performance and digitally mediated environments.


Program info HERE
Information about the presenters and featured artists HERE