Categories
Art

Audiovisual installation art piece based on wearable sensor data

The piece called D-A-T/D-A was presented in a group exhibition “ NOT IMPRESSIVE NOT BELIEVABLE ”.

The artists collectively known as KNPSST are Mira Kautto, Alisa Närvänen, Elina Peltonen, Marko Suovula, Janne Särkelä and Pekka Tynkkynen whose backgrounds are in art, clothing design, technology, music, architecture and contemporary dance. The group came together in the summer 2015 at Kone Foundation’s Saari Residence, where their first collaborative project called d-a-t/d-a started.

d-a-t/d-a is a document of an interdisciplinary project rooted in wearable sensor technology. It is a kinetic data installation, which registers physical gestures and movements and translates them into sound and light.

Categories
Art

Life cycle – a sound installation exploring human rhythms

The work gives aural and visual forms to the cycles related to being a human. The pain during the menstruation (dysmenorrhea or painful periods) is intimately highlighted with the help of sound. The interaction between the Earth, Moon and the Sun is experienced by a sonification of their orbital data and their effects on gravity – which pervades the experience of being a habitant of the Earth.

The work was presented as a part of a group exhibition with the theme Cycles, in the framework of AAVE festival of audiovisual arts, in Helsinki.

The work consists of four led strips and four channel audio system. The Sun and the Moon rotate around the visitor. Also, a possibility to participate in the installation is provided by means of a heart rate sensor.

In the installation the orbits of the Sun and the Moon around the Earth have been translated into sound. The cycle of sounds lasts about 50 minutes, which corresponds to about two years. The period was chosen, because the Sun and the Moon happen to be quite close to the same position in the beginning and in the end of the cycle.

Sounds of pain are played at random intervals between 1 – 2 minutes. The Led lights pulses and fades with the same interval.

The audible frequency of the Sun in the installation is a higher octave of its about 11 year long activity cycle. The frequency of the Moon comes from the so called Saros cycle, during which the Moon goes through various cycles related to its orbit. Saros cycle lasts about 18 years in real time. The sound of the Sun in the installation is low and continous, whereas the sound of the moon is higher and pulsating. The length of one pulse is a thousandth of a month. The relationship of the amplitudes of the sounds of the Moon and the Sun corresponds to their tidal force amplitude.

It is possible to participate in the installation. In the middle of the room there’s a pole, on which a green light can be seen. The light shows the place of a pulse sensor. Just beside the sensor there’s a red Led light, which shows the sensed pulses.

The sensor finds the pulse from a finger or a palm, when the body part rests on the sensor. The pressure on the sensor shouldn’t be too hard or too light for it to work consistently. The red led will start to pulse according to your heart rate, when the contact is right.

When six sequential pulses have been detected, a real heart beat sound is played.

Categories
Art

Sonification of a graphical piece – Sounds of Calligraphy

The three pieces of Sounds of Calligraphy playlist are the continuation from the Sarana performance at the opening of Viiva & Viiru calligraphy group exhibition in Helsinki, Finland. The pieces are based on a real time process that analyzes the images in three color channels, and some of the oscillator sound waves are derived from the image properties too. The process has 128 oscillators and filters per channel, and they are positioned to the stereo panorama to exactly follow the figures. The resulting music is thus a true voyage across the image.

The sonification process was realized with Max/MSP/Jitter. A very warm thanks to the Viiva & Viiru group for their openness to the abstract.

Categories
Art

Mechatronic art decoration for a party

A mechatronic art decoration for Aortta Party by Hytky. Max/MSP listened for a beat and triggered Arduino, which in turn controlled an electric motor. The motor had a rod attached to it, and a cardboard heart was taped to the tip of the rod. The position of the rod was monitored with a hall sensor. Heart struck against a thin veil, which was illuminated with red light from behind.

Video: Oskari Niitamo.

Categories
Art

Generative and interactive sound installation

AMBIENT² interprets the sound landscape of Harakka island in Helsinki into music into another language through a computer-abled generative process. We are born into a sound landscape to which we get used to through our lives and we take it as the familiar foundation, compared to which everything is strange and peculiar. It is about interpretation. When the same sound landscape is repeated as music something weird and unexpected is revealed. Video of the interactive sound installation.

Ambient^2 Generatiivinen ääni-installaatioMusic created by the AMBIENT² does not strive to fit its tones into any existing note system. It re-creates the frequencies of the source material by synthetic instruments as a spectral musical application. The final result is a musical work which never quite exactly repeats itself. The composer is the observed space which creates its own tonal system. The music thus created is not aleatory but determined by its own rules.

The basic form of the music is defined by ambient aesthetics, and in this case ambient sound creates the ambient music and the borders of music and the world are seamlessly intertwined.

The work was part of the La-Bas -biennale 2012 and it was presented at the sound art gallery Akusmata.