tag: Exhibits

Local Resonance Amplifiers (LRA) are parasitic city devices (PCD)
which amplify and dislocate wide band electromagnetic (EM) emissions
or signals. Mushroomed LRA devices serve as mute witness, creating
significant physical and symbolic imbalances within complex city-wide
spectral ecologies: subtle interactions between physical
constructions, communication technologies (wireless networks, mobile
phone networks, RFID, television, radio, radar), power lines and lines
of transmission, biological phenomena, and geologic properties.

Mixing Cities brings together the real-time ('live') sounds of several cities in an audiovisual installation. The interface consists of two speakers and a panel with five faders and five lamps. The environmental sounds at five locations are picked up by microphones and directly transmitted to Mixing Cities. One can adjust the volume of the incoming sounds by using the faders. In this way it is possible to listen to the sounds of one or more cities at the same time. Apart from the live sound, the current lighting at the locations is registered with sensors and directly translated into the light intensity of the lamps. By choosing and switching between the cities one can make his own journey between the cities and get a different experience of distances and space.
I want to encourage the audience to look at the concepts distance and space at a different angle. Mixing Cities presents another way to perceive the relationship between the physical and virtual distance. The installation tries to capture the subtle changes in the sound background of everyday life. One of the questions I ask myself in this work is how an individual is affected by the surrounding sounds, which often go unnoticed because of their familiarity.

This project will take the identity inferred on people by their oyster cards and use it to turn them into an artist. Each participant will be given part of a famous piece of art to recreate. In its rest state, the installation will show the current collaborative work. When a visitor swipes their Oyster card, the piece of art it is based on will show up faintly with the area assigned to them indicated. Using the light pen participants will then draw their interpretation of the area they have been given. They will be given either a selection of colours or, possibly, some predefined shapes or images. There will also be a website showing the current collaborative work.

ABOUT SOUNDNOMADS
The surroundings as DIY music instrument.
Ger Ger's SOUND NOMADS project is comprised of a combination of sound art, music, public art, performance, interactive installations as well as video. The constant search for noises, sounds and rhythms lies as central to SOUND NOMADS as the creation of ephemeral interactive sensor based playgrounds.
SOUND NOMADS actions mainly consist of three steps:
COLLECT site specific sound huntings/field recordings on and off the nomad way
PROCESS creation of sound/music scores, programming, hardware settings
REFLECT backtrack compositions, art performances/video.
Entire squares, hotspots, fields, meadows, ponds and patterns from day to day life are instrumentalized, and played. Surrounding objects get networked. Manholes become recording studios; hot tubs, resonating objects; the movements of persons, time bases; lampposts or mailboxes take the place of instrument strings and keys. The actual noises of objects lose their meaning and get replaced by triggered melodies/samples or generated tones. Contrasts, oppositions, and irritations are being created.
Complex high- tech settings and precise triggering of sensors lead to SOUND NOMADS performances. Their realtime generated sounds are part of the resulting videos. The technical equipment mainly consists of sensors, midi/audio interfaces, laptops, software, microphones, props, photo and video gear.
SOUND NOMADS ventures to artistically reflect on situations of everyday life and site- specific impressions as directly as possible; acoustically, aesthetically, and in respect of content. This project should not be an influenced work AFTER a trip but rather should facilitate a constant and authentic/emotional artistic flow with change of location as a direct source of inspiration. Nomadism as an essential and driving element.
The first SOUND NOMADS (Ger Ger + 1 Guest Nomad) performances took place on the US West Coast in 2006, followed by actions in Austria, Germany, Italy, France and Spain in 2007. The project is ongoing.
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6 SN VIDEO WORKS are ready for screening to date, more (max. a total of 12) may be completed for a presentation in 2009.
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Shoot Down Out (Release: 30-08- 2008, Duration 4:04)
preview: http://gerger.com/o/?siteID=1&id=36265
lower quality alternative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqXuN-V1qDs
SOUND NOMADS Performance #2
A motel bathroom - a hidden place for poor clothes shootouts. No pre- composed audio tracks at this time, a peaceful realtime living system on its own. Quietness, slowness. Continuous rhizome multi- channel instruments, only disturbed by human impact. Artistic reflections on the recurring contrasts between nature and urban environments and the American historical efforts to control nature. Cities represent the most intensive human modifications of the physical environment.
Technology: A variety of distance sensors combined with software settings form an autonomous system. Through external interferences, sensor calibrations become confused for a moment and affect clear/orderly tones of the VSTis. Thereafter the system returns to a seemingly chaotic autonomous state.
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Black Balloons (Release: 07-03-2008, Duration 4:26)
preview: http://gerger.com/o/?siteID=1&id=36266
lower quality alternative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ONBDny26aQ
SOUND NOMADS Performance #3
Deserts as environments of extreme heat may cause serious stresses and fragilities in different manners. Contrasts of vulnerability and eternal unbreakables. The appearance of balloons and cactuses side by side, a love-hate relationship with dangerous consequences.
Technology: When balloons burst/explode, sensors on the inside of the balloons become exposed, leaving sounds behind. Out of complete silence, a soundscape gradually emerges. Light sensors power the master track ... One of the balloons differs from the others, simulates, by means of a distance sensor, a water balloon, now silent due to the explosion and lost water. RT sound processing from the assessed sensor data.
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What the Fuck (Release: 31-08-2008, Duration 6:00)
preview: http://gerger.com/o/?siteID=1&id=36267
lower quality alternative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxmuukZL11A
SOUND NOMADS Performance #5
Native Americans are living in fenced Indian reservations in times when signs of the brutal history completely disappeared. Monuments remembering the loss are rare and voids remain. For two hours an empty billboard in Utah converted into an ephemeral interactive memorial. An investigation of history and memory, meaning and interrelations. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Technology: In covering up sensors hanging off the billboard with the palm of the hand, single syllables are unveiled.
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Play! (Release: 19-04- 2007, Duration 2:04)
preview: http://gerger.com/o/?siteID=1&id=24870
lower quality alternative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0iruknH8QE
SOUND NOMADS Performance #6
Entertainment can have positive impacts on us, it can destroy and break. Unachievable fantastic sim worlds, growing frustrations, offendings, suppressions of problems ... Play!
Technology: Live pitching of audio sample with distance sensor on the ground. Sensor equipped rocking dog as music score controller.
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Luxor 22.145 (Release: 20-04-2007, Duration: 3:00)
preview: http://gerger.com/o/?siteID=1&id=25002
lower quality alternative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8rnnyKP-Ug
SOUND NOMADS Performance #7
As planned - a m/hotel performance went down in Vegas. Luxor: rooms 4455, employees 4000, casino 120,000 square feet, 250 miles visible Xenon light shot. Room No. 22.145: sensor equipped bending matresses, sound generating moving chairs, pitch shifting ironing and flickering lights.
Technology: Lamps become sound triggers and pitch shifters by means of light sensors, irons turn into turntables through pressure sensors, chairs become free-moving VST instruments through sensor combinations. Mattresses (bend it over), drawers (open/close), closet doors, curtains (movements) and the TV set (light intensity of a selected channel) become a sampler ... This performance consists of seven essentially different superstructures and interactive scenarios. A night in the luxury hotel becomes a performance night.
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Lantern Dogs (Release: 16-04-2007, Duration: 2:09)
preview: http://gerger.com/o/?siteID=1&id=24999
lower quality alternative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwXccyLG9I
SOUND NOMADS Performance #10
Los Angeles dogs and puppies. Sidewalks - rich, poor, famous, empty. Beverly Hills lost and found in translation. Who is the dog - we are what we do. Watch out for the sweet and lovely lamp posts - in broad light, by day and by night.
Technology: With the help of some self-developed RT noise generators, the lamp post become playable through distance sensors. Live audio inputs and master track round off the setting.

Sensory Response Systems is an exploration into audiovisual performance using an array of sensors and diy electronics responsive to physical movements in order to control the audiovisual output in programs such as Pure Data (Pd), SuperCollider, Processing, etc. It also looks at reshaping and replicating the body through the use of fabric, textiles, technology and light. This work uses DIY hardware to build a new interface for live computer music performance, aiming to turn the performers body and clothes into an instrument allowing them to embody new technologies and computational devices.
The performance alters the perspective of the performer and performance space through noise, strobe lighting and computational technologies. Flickering shadows of the performers jerking movements, cables, and moving wires attached to the body are cast onto the walls of the performance space as the performers’ movements’ control screaming and shrieking hacked electronics and computer programmes, spewing out their internal circuitry.
As well as the performance aspect of this project, the sensor costume is also a stand alone installation. The installation acts as a self regulating feedback system. The main 'body' of the costume is constructed from muscle (shape memory alloy) wire which moves and pulsates in its abstracted bodily form in direct response to sounds being generated by the movement of the sensors, which are placed on the muscle wire.

This work is an interactive sound installation. If a participant touches the holes on the surface of the hemisphere, each sound for each hole will be created from inside of the hemisphere. Each hole represents each musical note that is similar to sound come from micro insects or micro organisms under the deep sea. The whole concept of objects and sounds will remind one of deep sea and sea organisms like jellyfish.

I am interested in the human reaction to physical motion, particularly the characteristics of motion that make something appear elegant as it moves. In addition, I am fascinated by how one can encourage empathy with a machine by the way it moves. I am convinced that a moving, tangible object has a different impact on people to a 2D image displayed on a screen.
I propose a robot made of two stepper motors mounted so that one rotates in a horizontal plane and one in a vertical plane. They move a wand-like appendage in space, much like a orchestra conductor's baton. An RFID reader mounted on the window glass reads people's Oystercards and generates a pattern of motion from the tag number and thus generates a gesture that is unique (and repeatable) associated with that card. It is an elegant, sweeping kind of motion, changing the path and speed according to the tag number. When a tag hasn't been read for a while, the robot will drift around, giving the impression of "looking" for people. I would not want it to be ever completely static, as that is one cue we use to recognise machine motion rather than natural motion (animals are rarely 100% still).
Gesture generation algorithm
Mifare cards (including Oystercards) store a tag number as 4 bytes (allowing 4,294,967,295 different tag numbers). The algorithm splits the bytes into nibbles (4 bits), giving a array of eight values each ranging from 1 to 16. Sixteen (arbitrary) points in space, arranged around the periphery of the robot's workspace, are assigned these values. When a card is read, the robot starts moving towards the point representing the first nibble in its tag number. Before it can get there, the point associated with the next nibble starts attracting the robot. Again, before it gets there, the following nibble attracts it. This continues until all eight points are processed. The motion is smoothed so that the robot moves in sweeping curves. Thus, each card will generate a pattern unique to that card, but one that is the same every time the card is read. The gesture generated “belongs” to that card user.
I have written a simulation program that generates gestures from Oystercard tag numbers. When it runs, it is clear that the robot is “trying” to get to a destination, but is always prevented from doing so. This triggers and empathic response from an observer and one “feels sorry” for it. An association between being thwarted from ones attempts to travel to a destination and the use of Oystercards is encouraged.
The base of the robot will be made sufficiently heavy to prevent it toppling over.
For safety reasons, the display area would have to be enclosed to prevent access to the arm while it is moving. A safety interlock switch would be mounted on the access door to disable power when it is opened. Only authorised people would be allowed access to the machine. It is designed to be operated continuously with no maintenance required.

A while ago, I filmed 25 people individually in a recording studio. I played them each note in the classical human vocal range, and asked them to sing it for four seconds. This was surprisingly
difficult, even for more experienced singers. Few people could sing in tune, or cover anything like the vocal range I requested. But the attempts were valiant, and the results were varied and unique.
I then edited them into a series of individual audiovisual samples. With the programming expertise of artist/code genius Evan
Raskob, I developed a custom computer program that allows these audiovisual samples to be played back in the manner of a vintage Fairlight synthesiser.
The result is an instrument that allows this amateur choir to be played like a piano, with four octaves range, twenty notes of polyphony and pressure-sensitivity. The instrument has been field-tested by Chad Lelong, a professional jazz pianist.
Uniquely, it also allows the singers to be seen as they perform. A dynamic visual composition is built up as the instrument is played. Their faces are projected onto a series of identical
hanging shapes, to form a ghostly disembodied choir. These hanging shapes also contain the speakers that play back the audio samples, creating a richly directional soundstage.

As people play the instrument, the results are recorded as midi files and added to a database. When the instrument is not being played, it becomes a ‘player piano’, playing selections from it’s database until someone hits a note on the keyboard.
In this way, a long musical composition is built up, consisting of the musical contributions of those people who decide to play the instrument.
This project looks at the possibilities for audio-visual composition when visual elements are generated at the same time as music so that the playing style and structure of the music takes into account how it appears. During testing of Pitch Control, Chad, our pianist, instinctively altered his playing style so that he produced a visual composition and rhythm that he found more aesthetically
pleasing. This is the result I was hoping for. Pitch Control, as an installation, invites the public to explore these audiovisual
possibilities for themselves.

The exhibition is open:
Monday to Friday 10:00 - 17:00
Saturday 23 May 12:00 - 17:00
Saturday 30 May 12:00 - 15:00
Please Note: the Exhibition finishes on Saturday 30 May at 15:00

In 2008, the Takeaway Festival team received funding from the Arts Council to support a commissions programme for
artists using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) or whose work redefines the accepted meaning of the term “musical instrument”. This programme attracted nearly 30 submissions from the UK, the USA, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands
and Austria.
The Exhibition includes both the commissioned artists and some of the other artists who submitted proposals.

Marcus Lyall (UK): Pitch Control
http://www.takeawayfestival.com/Exhibits/PitchControl
Take a seat, limber up your fingers and play away as keyboard notes are replaced by recorded singing whilst the heads of 30 different singers are projected in the room to form a virtual choir.

Alex Zivanovic (UK): RFID gesture-generating robot
Swipe a commonly used RFID card and the robot will produce a graceful performance unique to your information.

Yoon Chung Han (USA): Jellyfish musical instrument
Create your own sound composition over four octaves with Jellyfish, the interactive sound installation.

Ryan Jordan (UK): Sensory Response Systems
Sensory Response Systems is an exploration of audiovisual performance using an array of sensors responsive to physical movements. It also looks at reshaping and replicating the body through the use of fabric, textiles and technology.

Ger Ger, with Jakob Kort (Germany): SOUND NOMADS
The constant search for noises, sounds and rhythms is at the heart of SOUND NOMADS’ approach to creating ephemeral - interactive sensor based - playgrounds.

Neil Mendoza, Anthony Goh, Simeon Rose (UK): RFID art
Swipe your transport card or other RFID-based object and you will be invited to recreate a famous piece of art. The unique nature of the RFID tag will assign an area of the artwork which will flash up on screen. Use your hands to draw your version and feed into the collaborative work.

Bart Koppe (Netherlands): Mixing Cities
Mixing Cities brings together, in real time, the sounds of several cities in an audiovisual installation. By choosing and switching between the cities you can make your own journey between the cities and get a different experience of distances and space.

Martin Howse (UK/Germany): Local Resonance Amplifier
Reacting to changes in electromagnetic emissions and signals, the Local Resonance Amplifier acts as a parasitic device revealing the hidden interactions between communications technology, power lines, biological phenomena and geological properties.