I will show some media art works presented at the Sonic Acts Festival in 2006. (http://www.sonicacts.com/index_06.html/2006)
My reason for showing this is because it shows how in media art, artists often develop their own tools and applications. Also there are whole online communities that share knowlegde and software.
The Sonic Acts works seem to have a specific esthetic that I relate very much to technological art – and honestly, it is not so much my taste. I find it often to be nervous, attacking the senses, and sometimes rather soulless. Nevertheless it is interesting to take notice of, and there are always some elements that inspire.
From the website:
Autonomous computer art has seen a revival in recent years. Partly due to the rapid advances in hardware and software, over the last fifteen years applied and autonomous computer art has flourished in the visual arts and electronic music as well as in the worlds of film, video and games. As hardware and software have become more accessible and user-friendly a large group of artists has taken possession of this domain and developed a great deal of new work. In addition, ever more artists are developing their own hardware and writing their own software. This is an essential element in contemporary computer art.
PLAYLIST
> 200 Nanowebbers 02.49
artists: Semiconductor & Double Adaptor
> int.16/54//son01/30×1 05:43
lia [Video]. @c (Pedro Tudela & Miguel Carvalhais) [Audio].
> Berlin 04:11
artists: Karl Kliem / Dienststelle [Video]. Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto [Audio]
> Feedback / Flight Risk 04:33
artists: Robert Hodgin (flight404) [Visuals]. Bit Shifter [Audio]
> Chopping Heads 03:51
artists: Scott Pagano & Keepadding [Video]. Funkstörung [Audio].
> 4413 04:11
artist: Mateusz Herczka.
> Darkness (Not Darkness) 04:00
artist: Kurt Ralske.
> frozen music 04:22
artists: farmersmanual.
playtime: ca. 35 mins.
INFO ABOUT THE WORKS
> 200 Nanowebbers
Using custom-made scripting, the melodies and rhythms spawn a nano scale environment that shifts and contorts to the audio resonance. Layers of energetic hand drawn animations, play over the simplest of vector shapes that form atomic scale associations. As the landscape flickers into existence by the light of trapped electron particles, substructures begin to take shape and resemble crystalline substances.
> int.16/54//son01/30×1
the creation of a versatile system of audio-visual articulation that can be refitted to a variety of spaces or formats.
> Berlin
piano > direction | volume > size.
bass > color | treble > fissures.
> Feedback / Flight Risk
Feedback is the result of experimentation with beat detection, dynamic threshold levels, and 3D video feedback loops. The audio track was created by Bit Shifter, a musician who creates music with Nintendo Gameboys.
A feedback loop is created by mapping the contents of the screen onto a three dimensional space. The beat triggers control the position and rotation of the camera as well as the field of view and style of feedback.
> Chopping Heads
Keepadding supplied processed + remixed still images to Scott Pagano who handled the animation using a myriad of stock and custom visual tools to synthesize the movement. Experimenting with a wide gamut of visual freak-outs, from broken video cameras to custom-designed generative 3D tools, Pagano and Keepadding broke open the systems at their disposal to create a red veined stew of underage knife play that crosses into and breaks apart the realms of tech-savvy digital art and raw gritty graffiti-inspired visual insanity.
> 4413
4413 is a 12 meters wide video projection based on a single video take which I made during a train trip between Lelystad and Almere, documenting a trajectory through the artificial Dutch landscape. Because the topography is completely flat, the train acts as the operative mechanism of a slit-scan camera. 4413 is a combination of high speed and extreme slowness, somewhere between monumental landscape painting and visualization science
> Darkness (Not Darkness)
Darkness (Not Darkness) is created from images of Iraq in 1992 (in the aftermath of the First Gulf War). The images are time-manipulated with the artist’s custom software. Desert, sky, water, fire and oil flow and blend organically, mixing like liquids. Events that actually happened sequentially appear to occur simultaneously.
> frozen music
Our third presentation of BuckyMedia involved the public on as many levels as possible. The geodesic sphere was equipped with wireless sound system and digital sensors. It was at the same time musical instrument and concert hall. The stunning changes of daylight in the gallery space provided an atmosphere of high-altitude and lucid dreaming, while the sonified gravitational data of the structure added a narrow band of digital squeals and screams to the deep vibrations of the shrink-wrap window drums.
