Duncan Laurie blogs

MAX in Ableton Live

todd — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:48:04 +0000

Cycling '74 and Ableton announce Max for Live...

Max for Live puts the power and potential of Max/MSP inside Live. Create all the instruments, effects and extensions you've ever wanted. Go beyond the common and predictable, and transcend the limits that conventional tools impose. Build completely unique synths and effects, create algorithmic composition tools, or fuse Live and controller hardware into radical, new music machines. Join a society of makers and share ingenuity. Max for Live was co-developed by Ableton and Cycling '74.

link: Ableton - Max for Live

Spinning Silk into Sensors

todd — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:09:58 +0000

Technology Review: Spinning Silk into Sensors:

A simple process turns cocoons into optical devices with biological applications.
By Katherine Bourzac

Fiorenzo Omenetto on the steps of the Tufts bioengineering building, where he makes silk optical devices.
Credit: Porter Gifford

Silkworm cocoons shipped by the boxful from Japan to an optics lab at Tufts University will meet a different fate from those headed to textile factories around the world. Rather than being woven into curtains or clothing, the strong protein fibers that caterpillars once spun around themselves will be used to build optical materials that can serve as the basis for sensors and other devices. Bioengineer Fiorenzo Omenetto, who creates the devices, ultimately hopes to build implantable, biodegradable sensors that could help monitor patients' progress after surgery or track chronic diseases such as diabetes.

See how cocoons are turned into optical devices.

Watch Fiorenzo Omenetto explain his work in silk optics.

(Via Technology Review)

EMLI

duncan — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:53:48 +0000

Photo by Vincent Leclerc

EMLI is a student project from Daniel Campbell and Daniel Roberts, made while they were enrolled in Vincent Leclerc's Physical Computing class at Concordia University in 2007.

The two Daniels built a hardware interface to receive millivolt signals from plants and sonify them in MAX/MSP on an Apple MacBook Pro. Their results and especially the reactions of the plants were eerily similar to our own findings. Most interesting is the end of their video, seen here, where the plant reacts to the intent to close their program, but stops when they point this out.

Their project was inspired by many of the same researchers that we have looked to: Cleve Backster, George L. Lawrence, and Michael Theroux.

The Return of Amateur Science

todd — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:11:07 +0000

The Return of Amateur Science: "Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder explains how the natural tinkerers who built the web are starting to hack the world.
Last week, while browsing the Popular Science archives (which recently became available on Google), I noticed that the earlier issues of this 138-year-old magazine contained quite a few articles devoted to amateur science. The 1940s and 1950s were a heyday for basement-based research, with experiments such as making hydrogen gas, building a photomicrographic camera out of a stovepipe, constructing…

(Via GOOD - Blogs)

Scientists try to let the blind 'see' fish

todd — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:03:17 +0000

Scientists try to let the blind 'see' fish: "As brightly colored fish dart in and out of the rocks scattered in a small aquarium, a bewildering melody follows each of their movements.
Video here.
(Via USATODAY.com Science and Space - Top Stories)

aerostaticmusic.com relaunch

todd — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:08:16 +0000

Friends Michele Darling and Terry Golob relaunch the website for their aerostatic music project today.

An RSS feed for their news is here.

Todd Thille built the site with Drupal and custom PHP.

Duncan at The Stone, NYC - Dec 9th

todd — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:35:51 +0000

Duncan Laurie and David Last will perform "The Secret Music of Plants" at The Stone in NYC on Dec 9th beginning at 10pm.

From The Stone website:

Duncan Laurie (plant interface artist) David Last (plant interpreter)
House plants connected to lie detector equipment produce alien tones.

devinesound.net

todd — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:25:32 +0000

Richard Devine and Josh Kay have recently launched a commercial sound design company.

Devinesound is a sound design and music production facility that focuses solely on creating utterly unique & uncompromisingly high resolution sound design, sound effect and sample libraries. We specialize in the creation of custom sound design environments & custom sound effects packages for projects of almost any nature. We provide audio content, sound design and conceptual realization for film, television, gaming systems, audio hardware/software, interactive web-based environments, and everything else in between. We are currently building a online sound library database & store from which free samples will be offered regularly.

Many of the samples on their first two sound libraries released on Sony Creatve Software - Sound Series, The Electronic Music Manuscript: A Richard Devine Collection and Pulse: Pure Analog Lifeforms, were recorded during visits to Dragonline Studio over the past two summers.

Keep up to date with Richard and Josh's activities at the DEVSND blog.

Preventing Forest Fires With Tree Power: Sensor System Runs On Electricity Generated By Trees

duncan — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:52:21 +0000

MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires.

What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation's borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials.

The U.S. Forest Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools, including remote automated weather stations. But these stations are expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire prediction models and earlier alerts. However, manually recharging or replacing batteries at often very hard-to-reach locations makes this impractical and costly.

The new sensor system seeks to avoid this problem by tapping into trees as a self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE).

The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire. Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center in Boise, Idaho.

Scientists have long known that trees can produce extremely small amounts of electricity. But no one knew exactly how the energy was produced or how to take advantage of the power.

(Via ScienceDaily)

David Last - The Secret Life of Plants

duncan — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:23:46 +0000

DAVID LAST

THE SECRET MUSIC OF PLANTS

In the summer of 2007 I joined some friends at a special location on the shoreline of Rhode Island. This location is the home of Duncan Laurie, a friend who is a sculptor and researcher of the connection between science and sound.

Upstairs on this property there is a laboratory with a wide array of unusual electrical research equipment, and a full sound system with subs. What happens at this place is research into the nature of biofeedback and sound. While we were there, Duncan had connected electrical sensors to the surface of plants; a venus flytrap, a potted houseplant, and what looked like a soggy variety of moss. The sensors are the kind of electrical sensor you might put on the surface of your own skin to measure slight fluctuations in your natural electric field. I believe they are the same thing you might see in movies attached to the foreheads of people undergoing lie-detector (polygraph) tests. They are also used generally to give bio-feedback in relaxation experiments.

One night Justin Boreta (who was also there at the time) did some technical work to connect these electrical sensors to MIDI signals which were sent into music software, by way of a sensor data translation program called 'IBVA'. Justin did some amazing work that night, translating the electrical signals from these living plants directly into abstract sound. The sound sources were, I believe, both software and hardware synthesizers, and a digital harmonization processor. The sounds produced directly by the plants' natural electrical fields were complex, and sounded like some kind of alien form of consciousness (which in a way, they kind of were). When rounded off into notes instead of free-flowing tones, the melodies produced were eerie and (as might be expected) quite organic. The following day Justin had to leave, but together we had installed IBVA on my laptop. That day I created a stereo audio mix of the elements Justin had created.

Though Justin had gone, the IBVA system was still there, and I had worked briefly with Justin to get it working on my computer, so I did one experiment of my own. It was less ambitious than Mr. Boreta's experiment, because it dealt with the data from only one sensor, and dealt with a single audio instrument. This experiment is what I would like to share with Modyfier.

THE EXPERIMENT

I set up my laptop with the IBVA feeding data into my music software, which was running a granular sampler patch. On my laptop, I was able to play recordings of music I had been creating, and step through microscopically short segments of this music. The position of playback of these tiny sound 'grains' was determined by the electrical data coming in from the plant itself. In other words, the electrical charges on the surface of the plant helped to select what part of what musical sound file on my hard drive would be played. In this way, the piece is a collaboration between myself and a single houseplant.

The goal of the experiment was to find out if it is possible to allow a plant to unconsciously structure a piece of music (or at the very least, to use the biological flux of electrical signals from a house plant in order to determine a musical structure, in collaboration with a human (me)).

The collaboration was multi-layered. I had been preparing sketches of orchestral music for my own projects, and there were a large number of sound files on my hard drive; these were used as 'building blocks' for the musical collage. Some of the sound files contained full pieces of music I had composed; some contained only orchestra instruments playing melodies or chords, some contained crazy sound design, recordings of bells from a carnival, or choir voices singing dissonant tones. Almost all of these sounds were acoustic in origin. All of these sound files were made available to the Reaktor patch I was using in order to create a new piece of music out of many fragments. As the piece progressed, I could change which sound files were being accessed, and the plant's energy readings could change what part of the sound file was being played, and how much of the sound file would be heard. Whether this constituted conscious collaboration is, to my mind, irrelevant.

So, not only was there collaboration in terms of how the files were being played back (my interpretation of how the plant's 'alien intelligence' electrical signals could be used to generate music), there was also a collaboration in terms of my offering of the original audio source material for 'mulching.' Certainly, in order to get musical results, I heavily impressed my own sonic personality on the experiment; however, the plant's feedback did in fact help to create a composition I never would have created myself.

The recording is totally un-edited, recorded straight to disk. The 16 minutes of running time are exactly as they sounded coming from Reaktor, live in the room! There are several 'movements,' and the whole thing strikes me as very similar in its overall feeling to modern classical music.

The whole thing was made exactly 1 year ago. I hope you enjoy it!

download: david last - process part 088 (music for house plants in rhode island)

(Via modyfier)

Most Direct Evidence of Dark Energy Detected

gordon — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:35:57 +0000

A new color-coded image represents the first visual evidence of the existence of dark energy, a mysterious force that astronomers think is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up.

"This is the first time when we actually see the effect of dark energy in a picture," said study leader István Szapudi of the University of Hawaii. "This is the most direct evidence of dark energy."

The new image reveals the spectral fingerprints created by dark energy as it stretches huge supervoids and superclusters, structures that are roughly half a billion light-years across.

(Via National Geographic News.)

The Geoglyphs of Teohuanaco

duncan — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:45:28 +0000

Using earth orbiting satellites, acclaimed researcher David Flynn has studied the high plateau of Bolivia and found previously undiscovered unnatural patterns stretching outward from Lake Titicaca for hundreds of square miles. The geoglyphic works range from arrow straight parallel lines, enormous over lapping perfect circles and rectangles to 'labyrinth like' systems of walls and mounds extending over every feature of the terrain.

One hundred and twenty miles south of the lake, spirals, linear arrays and crisscrossing paths are scored into the earth covering an entire desert. Closer to the lake, branching walls and rectangular cells can be seen running vertically down hills. Many of these walls extend for hundreds of feet or more and maintain an average width of 15 feet. The estimated combined mass of the geoglyphic formations surrounding Lake Titicaca is staggering, exceeding many of the greatest known constructions of the ancient world.

Many researchers believe that the ruins of Tiahuanaco, situated only 12 miles south of Lake Titicaca and near the center of the geoglyphic landscape, is the oldest city ever discovered on earth. Consistent with these theories, the Inca living in the region during the Spanish conquest explained that Tiahuanaco had existed for thousands of years before their civilization began.

According to Inca legend, Lake Titicaca was revered as the location where the god Viracocha created a race of giants and later, the first humans. The Inca maintained that the giants built Tiahuanaco and also many other cities and structures in the area. However, due to their great evil, Viracocha destroyed the giants in a world flood. This legend is still believed by the local Indian inhabitants to this day.

(Via Raiders News Network.)

Earth's Cries Recorded in Space

duncan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:06:02 +0000

Earth's Cries Recorded in Space: "Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles."

(Via SPACE.com.)

Mind Meld III

todd — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:56:59 +0000

The weekend of Friday the 13th marked the 3rd annual Mind Meld gathering at Duncan Laurie's Jamestown, Rhode Island studio. An incredible assortment of audio and video artists were assembled, ostensibly to relax, but with so much talent in one place, a show or two is inevitable.

Dragonline Studio.

Duncan's three-storey studio sits atop Bull Point, surrounded by water on three sides. The studio was built entirely out of salvaged materials. Floors made of glass block allow light to penetrate up from the lower workshop, through the main room and into the laboratory on the top floor. It is on the top floor that Duncan and his electrical engineer Gordon Salisbury have been experimenting with sonifying signals from Nature. There is an impressive array of old Radionic equipment as well as a number of devices that Gordon has developed. The visual centerpiece of the lab is the "Music Machine", an 8' tall cuboctahedron that was part of a GENESIS Bio-Entrainment Module, a bio-feedback device developed in the 1980's. The machine is now host to Gordon's Purr Generator. The purr generator is a device which generates a signal at approximately 25 Hz. This coincides with the frequency of vibrations given off by a “happy cat” and has long been thought to be therapeutic. External audio sources can be played through the machine.

Gordon dialing in a plant.

Much of the activity at the studio in the last few years has been given over to exploring signals in Nature. Based on precedents set by Cleve Backster and T. Townsend Brown, plants and rocks are fitted with electrodes or have copper leads affixed to them. Small voltages present are picked up with a variety of test equipment, including Wheatstone bridges, rate of change convertors, EKGs, and the IBVA brainwave monitor. The resulting data streams are converted to MIDI and used to drive Ableton Live.

( Photo by Arrow )

For the artists that have assembled each year, the draw of a fantastic location, strange nature research and wealth of information about Radionics that Duncan possesses are too much to resist. This years gathering included mainstays; Steve Nalepa, a West Coast electronic musician, gaining attention with his forthcoming Flatlands CD/DVD and Bass Science, a dubstep project with MattB; Todd Thille ( aka Synesthete ), an Istanbul based VJ and multimedia artist currently engaged in designing new software and hardware for the explorations underway at Duncan's studio; David Lublin, of Vidvox, makers of the popular VJ software VDMX; Josh Randall ( aka Robotkid ), a Creative Director at Harmonix by day, working titles like Rock Band and Phase; Aerostatic, the Brooklyn based couple Michelle Darling and Terry Golob, who's style ranges from ambient to breakcore with some Seseame Street (both have worked at Sesame Workshop) in for good measure.

Newer faces included Brian Kane, a former member of EBN and the self described "Karl Rove of the art world, who was busy pushing his latest meme, Meat Water; Ooah, one of the members of rising stars, the Glitch Mob; Richard Devine, still recovering from a near death experience after a small wound on his foot, infected with staph, nearly destroyed his heart, came to reek sonic mayhem with a massive stack of modular synths; Josh Kay ( aka Jeswa ), who joined Richard in exploring the sonic possibilities of the studio, and a formidable force in his right as a member of Soul Oddity and Phoenecia and founder of Schematic Records; CDM's own Peter Kirn rounded out the list of performing artists.

we'll do it live - Pell Chaffey Hall

we'll do it live - Aerostatic (Terry & Michelle)

we'll do it live - David Lublin & Nalepa

we'll do it live - Richard Devine & Josh Kay

Through the work of Elizabeth Keithline and Nick Bauta of The Steel Yard and Firehouse 13, the audio visual extravaganza, "we'll do it live" found a home at the Pell-Chafee center in downtown Providence. Two massive 40' wide screens were hung from the three-story vaulted ceiling. Duncan and Aerostatic opened with an exploration of signals coming from a piece of granite (seen in their Rockstar short) and a banana. Peter Kirn deftly handled Kore for his 30 minute set with reactive visuals by Synestete. Brian Kane performed selections from his triple-head av masterpiece, HDADD. Robotkid and rndm threw down a bumpin' av mashup. Nalepa and David Lublin got the party moving with Flatlands remixes, dubstep tracks and ethereal hand-held footage with Quartz Composer overlays. Ooah brought out the glitch hop with his Panty Raid and tracks from other Mob members. Richard Devine and Josh Kay double-teamed Traktor, bring the soundsystem down with meters in the red and finishing out the night with TapStereo.

Josh Kay and Richard Devine.

Richard Devine dreaming of Swedish engineering.

The event picked up and relocated to Duncan's studio where Richard and Josh Kay set up a wall of modular synths to plug into the different sound sources. Peter got busy writing an FFT patch in Processing and tried it out with signals coming from an onion and a lime. He also experimented with Gordon's Bat Box. The rest of the crew amused themselves with Rock Band and chatting in small groups around the bar-b-gue that sprang up on the driveway.

Beat Research - Nalepa and Robotkid.

Beat Research - Brian Kane and Peter Kirn.

The group started to disperse on Sunday and everyone but Richard and Josh Kay had left by the time that Steve, his girl Arrow, Peter and I headed up to Boston on Monday night. We met up with Robotkid and Brian Kane for a show in Cambridge at Beat Research. There was a good crowd despite it being a rainy school night. Peter had much better control over his Kore set. Robotkid and I mixed visuals until Brian fired up his DVJ and played some of his AV pieces. Nalepa came in a pinstripe suit and tore up the room with Bass Science dubstep.

Peter working the strobes at the MIT Museum.

Peter and I started Tuesday morning at the new offices of Harmonix. We decided not to get sucked into any meetings and beat a retreat to the MIT Museum. There were good exhibits on deep sea craft, high-speed photography and sculptor Arthur Ganson.

Nalepa with visionary artist Paul Laffoley.

The afternoon brought a visit to the studio of visionary painter Paul Laffoley. He had requested a chicken stuffed in a watermelon, potential racial slur aside, we obliged and hand delivered him a "chelon." Paul was in the midst of prepping for a 60s and 70s retrospective that is to be on display in New York in February. He was also hard at work on a Tarot deck. We parted with Peter afterwards and the 3rd annual Mind Meld came to a close.

Insects using plants as telephones

todd — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:50:39 +0000

Insects using plants as telephones: "
By Roland Piquepaille | A team of Dutch ecologists has found that subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects use plants to communicate. ‘Subterranean insects issue chemical warning signals via the leaves of the plant. This way, aboveground insects are alerted that the plant is already occupied.’ This means that by using ‘green telephone lines,’ the two kinds of insects can avoid to compete for the same plant, allowing for faster growth for both species. Fascinating, but read more…

You can see above an example of interaction between aboveground and belowground insects, using plant leaves as ‘green phone lines.’ (Credit: Roxina Soler, NIOO-KNAW) Here is a link to a larger version of this picture.
Let’s look first at the short Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) news release. ‘In recent years it has been discovered that different types of aboveground insects develop slowly if they feed on plants that also have subterranean residents and vice versa. It seems that a mechanism has developed via natural selection, which enables the subterranean and aboveground insects to detect each other. This avoids unnecessary competition. Via the ‘green telephone lines’, subterranean insects can also communicate with a third party, namely the natural enemy of caterpillars. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside aboveground insects. The wasps also benefit from the volatile signals emitted by the leaves, as these reveal where they can find a good host for their eggs.’
This research work has been conducted at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in the Department of Multitrophic Interactions (MTI) of the Centre for Terrestrial Ecology. For those of you who don’t know what ‘multitrophic’ means, please read this page at Wikipedia. You’ll discover that ‘trophic’ comes from a Greek word meaning food or nutrition. ‘Multitrophic interactions are those which involve more than two trophic levels in a food web. The term is most often applied to interactions among plants, herbivores and predators.’
This particular project was led by Roxina Soler Gamborena, a PhD student at NIOO. Here is how she describes her expertise in plant-insect multitrophic interactions. ‘Plants and insects are part of a complex multitrophic environment, in which they closely and actively interact. However, a systematic tendency to study mainly aboveground insect interactions limited the ability to develop more predictive models to achieve a better understanding of ecology and evolution in a more realistic frame. In the project I am working in, we are interested in study the interactions between below and aboveground insects, and how they can affect each other.’
Her project, ‘A multitrophic approach linking below and aboveground organisms,’ is described in the MTI’s student subjects page. Here is one part of the introduction. ‘Recently, there is an increasing interest in studying the interaction of aboveground and belowground compartments as a whole, rather than isolated aboveground studies. It is now acknowledged that insects can interact even when they feed on the host plant in different moments and parts of the plant, and some experiments had been carried out to study the interactions between belowground and aboveground insect herbivores. The main aim of this study is to determine if the oviposition behaviour of aboveground hyperparasitoids (and parasitoids) is affected by feeding damage by herbivores in the soil, as these affect parasitoid host and plant quality, using the follow multitrophic system as target for the study.’ The above figure has been picked from this document.
For more information, you can read one of the technical paper co-authored by Soler and published in Functional Ecology under the title ‘Foraging efficiency of a parasitoid of a leaf herbivore is influenced by root herbivory on neighbouring plants’ (Volume 21, Issue 5, Pages 969-974, October 2007). Here is an excerpt from the abstract. ‘Our results show that the interaction between an above-ground foliar feeding insect and its parasitoid can be influenced by the presence of non-host herbivores feeding on the roots of neighbouring conspecific plants.’
You also can read a paper published in Oikos, another Blackwell Publishing journal, under the title ‘Root herbivores influence the behaviour of an aboveground parasitoid through changes in plant-volatile signals’ (Volume 116, Number 3, Pages 367-376, March 2007). Here is the last paragraph of the abstract. ‘Our results provide evidence that the foraging behaviour of a parasitoid of an aboveground herbivore can be influenced by belowground herbivores through changes in the plant volatile blend. Such indirect interactions may have profound consequences for the evolution of host selection behaviour in parasitoids, and may play an important role in the structuring and functioning of communities.’
Sources: The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), April 11, 2008; and various websites
Science, World News"

(Via Alternative News & Media: Daily Breaking News.)

Richard Devine's "The Electronic Music Manuscript" loop and sample library available

todd — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:28:34 +0000

Richard Devine, who visited the studio in July 2007, has just released a loop and sample library with Sony Creative Software. The Electronic Music Manuscript includes recordings of a number of devices from the studio, including Bat Box II, the Soul Beacon, and several other radionic devices and shortwave radios. There is also a section of video shot and edited by Terry Golob of Aerostatic.

Singing plants...

todd — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:22:58 +0000

Singing plants...: "

Vanessa writes in with another cool project involving plants and Arduino, made by Halfmachine.dk -

The Singing Plant is an installation that lets the audience interact with a natural plant. When the plant is touched it gives feedback in the forms of sounds and light. The more people touch the it, the more enegetically it responds. The sound gains volume and the light in the room grows from dim to bright.

Peoples reactions become part of the installation. We have seen people pity the plant. We have seen people caress it. And we have seen people dance enthusiastically around it.

The purpose is not to provide answers, but to question established preceptions of the relationship between man, machine and nature.

Related:

Twittering plants.

[Read this article]

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

Rock Music paper posted

duncan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:50:06 +0000

The Rock Music paper that was presented at the Spark Festival this past February is now online in it's entirety.

Abstract: Millivolt level signals produced by certain rocks lend themselves to scientific, artistic and mythical interpretation. Empirical probing of these signals by an artist and an electrical engineer observed both linear and non-linear displays. Whether interpreted through the lens of science or panpsychism, the signals themselves provide an excellent template for sonic experimentation. Accumulated years of unstructured qualitative data indicate these tiny voltages originating in the core of the rock react to outside stimulus in a variety of perplexing ways. Creative application has therefore tended to produce unexpected and unexplained results.

G. K. Chesterton Quote

duncan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:21:33 +0000

“One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”

— G. K. Chesterton

"Submitted by Chris Davies Hooker, one of Thayer H. Laurie's friends at the time of Thayer's death on March 7th, 2008; Thayer was 92 years young."

David Wexler

duncan — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:14:37 +0000

David Wexler, a filmmaker and culturally informed young man came by the studio for a visit. Friend Todd Thille had met David at the Amsterdam Film Experience last Fall and put us in contact. David is in the process of launching Mandelbot.tv, a platform for mind-expanding media in the 21st century. His personal blog is at mbot.tv.

Spark Festival, Richard Devine, Radionics, Neg-entropy and Duende*

duncan — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:37:28 +0000

The Spark Festival provided Todd Thille and I the opportunity to perform the first ever 'authentic' rock concert; that is to say, a concert where the rocks were making the tunes. For me, it was also my first 'public' performance as an electronic musician. But it wasn't until Thursday night when Todd, Steve Nalepa and I went to the Whole night club to hear Richard Devine be interviewed that the thoughts which present themselves here began to assemble.

I met Richard last summer for the first time when he came, at the invitation of Steve, to stay for a few days at the studio. We had exchanged a few emails, but I was not up to speed on his actual history or approach to sound. What immediately struck me when he began to narrate his learning process in the interview, was the extremely visceral and physically intense approach he had to sonic composition. Richard described his completely obsessive quest for the right instruments, and from them, the right sounds, which he hammered and wrestled into anti-compositions. He described his early work as a fusion of Punk and Hip Hop, to my ear a violent, consumptive rendering of sound that would make any junk yard demolition crew proud. To Richard's ear, the psychedelic impact of hearing a wad of paper being crunched into a ball while high on DMT is about as good a sonic experience as one could ever wish for.

Richard Devine - Dragonline Studio, July 2007

Last summer, I began to get a good sense of this inner demon of de-constructed sound down. He devoured every sonic tool we had, all to forging an alien sonic space. I hadn't at the time realized that he also designed his own equipment. Then, at one point in the Spark narrative, Richard flashed pictures the instruments in his home studio he had commissioned to be built, I sat up. Briefly, as images flicked by, I saw what I thought to be a Radionics device. Asking him about it later, he said it was the "Chaos Synth", a processor custom built for him by Tim Adams. What I took for radionic rubbing plates were indeed rubbing plates, but ones used to control volume and tone with the surface of a finger.

"Chaos Synth" (Image courtesy of Richard Devine)

de la Warr radionic device

At that moment, in my mind a very unusual series of correlations began between sonic art and radionics began.

Few people today believe radionics devices actually do anything. There is even a scathing display in the Minneapolis Science Museum section on Medical Quackery devoted to Dr. Albert Abrams, the founder of Radionics. The distain is mainly because the energy radionics devices purport to manipulate can not be authenticated by science. As I listened to Richard describe the process he has evolved for making his music, I also saw that the sounds he was searching for only became available as the technology evolved which enabled them to be synthesized. Their origin in Richard's psyche was also beyond authentication by science. Sure, the types of sounds probably could be heard in nature or conjured out of some mechanical thrashing, in the manner of Cage and Stockhausen, but without electrical stretching, processing and overlay, could these sounds effectively become functional components of sonic composition?

So, my thinking rambled, maybe the creation and design of radionics machines made the mysterious blend of chi and electronic energy usable for their inventors as well? Could not some subtle sense of design, like whatever drives Richard to find new sonic sources, also have guided these healer/inventors to appropriate energy directly from the core of Nature, calibrate it through dials, and direct it with intent through wires or light? Perhaps certain instruments have to be used by someone in a special way before everyone else knows what they can do; true enough in music, right? Could sonic based art forms exist without artists first manipulating new or unlikely tools, in such a way as to contort their original meaning and purpose into something never before heard? And then, in turning the process around, design new tools to find yet more sounds?

OK, you think, but sound is audible and can be scientifically measured; it's not some invisible 'energy' like we say the radionics box is directing. True enough, but while the sound can be measured, the 'art' component of a work cannot. The 'art' comes from the same type of invisible domain that the healer enters to reverse the process of a disease. Both artists and radionic healers apply their knowledge to instruments that are in the here and now, but they control them in ways that defy and transcend mechanistic analysis. If manipulating any measurable sound was enough for Richard, he wouldn't still be scouring the world for sound configurations that haven't been heard before. The 'art' component is the unmeasurable process that extracts new meaning from form. Sometimes in order to discover new meanings, old formal processes have to be overturned. To understand radionics, the scientific prejudice for discarding the role consciousness plays in any empirical inquiry or analytical activity must be re-considered. Radionics cannot be studied in a scientifically 'objective' manner because it is a self referential methodology like art. And like art, radionics is impossible to practice without first considering the role of the practioners consciousness in the activity.

So, if that is true, then what type of an art tool is a radionics device?

Well, watching Richard, Todd, or Steve or anyone else I have seen make electronic compositions with a computer, I would have to say the computer IS the radionic device. I am saying a radionic device is a tool that translates a non-material intent into an external environment or living system. In fact, most art making tools are radionic, pure and simple. But what does that mean?

When making art, the artist works against their own inertia. He or she also works against cultural inertia, the burden of all previous art and artistic assumptions. All our instincts to remain in relative comfort in a familiar artistic world is in fact submission to confinement within fixed cognitive boundaries. Breaking through these self-imposed boundaries reduces the inertia of culture and habit. We feel freer and happier the less inertia life imposes upon us. To attain freedom, we utilize tools and techniques we first discover in ourselves and then apply to our tools. I am a carver by profession. When I began carving I was all thumbs. Every time I hit the chisel, the next time I hit my knuckle or finger. My consciousness was trying to learn how to direct the chisel into the stone to manipulate the surface without hurting my hand. The pain on my blunders added to the inertial weight of learning the carving process. I needed to employ my consciousness to alleviate the inertia. The better I paid attention, the more I overcame the inertia, or unconsciousness, of being a novice carver. The hammer and chisel were the radionics device I employed to overcome inertia.

Of course I wasn't using a chisel to cure a disease the way a radionics device appears to do, unless you allow ignorance as a disease. I was using the chisel to train my mind to embrace a state of neg-entropy in my work process, making the work move faster and better, with more control. As I sat and listened to Richard, I heard him describe finding and utilizing numerous sound technologies for much the same purpose. The sound being produced wasn't the point; it was the degree to which the process of creating the sounds produced that feeling of ascension; i.e, the neg-entropy. The composition was a by product of the ascension, but that is what was left to share.

That isn't all. As I carved, I naturally grew tired. Carving is a very physically exhausting task, compounded by the pain of striking ones hand with a heavy hammer. Yet there were many times that toward the end of any given day or night, just before I was about to collapse with fatigue, that suddenly everything changed. The exhaustion would dissipate; the hammer blows would begin to harmonically align, making carving graceful and easy. In short, my mind and body slipped into a state of neg-entropy, a state of sublime harmony that spontaneously arose at the end of the work cycle. No doubt most people have this experience in some way or another; it's very gratifying and hard to forget. I get the feeling artists in particular crave the experience; it certainly seemed familiar to Richard.

So, if by accident, working with simple tools in a creative way can precipitate this very pleasurable release from ones' ordinary constraints and foibles, what could happen if more sophisticated tools were developed that accelerated the process? Don't we agree that computers provide acceleration of this sort, especially when wedded to a creative process?

Performance artist Carly Ptak of Heresee using a de la Warr radionic device.

Electronic music is usually found in night clubs. VJ's, like Todd, expand the medium into light and space. Most performances are spontaneous, not extensively pre-conceived; the artists work through improvisation, interpreting and guiding the atmosphere of the club as it unfolds throughout the evening. An environment is generated that creates a communal neg-entropy; spirits are lifted, people move and dance, the worldly cares grow remote. These effects aren't accidental. The DJ's and VJ's have to use their tools to spring the energy. They have to put hand and mind to instrument and carefully guide the space into an enveloping sense of beauty.

So what does radionics have to do with this familiar occurrence? Think of radionics as something that works directly on inertia utilizing directed intent. If I can discover that a hammer and chisel can be used to dispel inertia and open my mind to pouring free flowing cosmic energy into my work, why shouldn't I believe it is possible to use a calibrated instrument composed of dials and rubbing plates to extend that energy into specific parts of my body or my art, or for that matter, the environment?

What happens to a sound signal when you tweak it with all the effects in your software? It radically changes its nature. You can guide the sound design with a very intuitive part of your being. You then mould it into fixed, pre-determined parameters. Why shouldn't we believe we can refine ourselves the same way, by removing the inertia that holds us down? Why not have at our disposal instruments that reduce inertia—ones of dials & chips & wire, programmed to focus neg-entropy on our own blocked circuits?

Who says we can't utilize consciousness in technology to help us overcome the inertial barriers we may confront? Doesn't music sooth the savage beast and TV the savage child? Could not our predecessors working at the dawn of electrical instrumentation have accidentally invented a methodology for accessing neg-entropy, back in the days when nobody really understood electro-magnetism very well? Couldn't they have done it just because they decided they could? Look at all the other wonderful things they discovered then? How can we be so absolutely certain radionics devices don't work, when a hundred years later they are still being designed and used all across the world?

A hundred years ago who would have believed we could store a thousand symphonies on a microchip? Who would believe you could sit down with a slender typewriter like device and design and play the complex sonic architecture used everywhere in multi-media composition? Richard followed a sonic design process that began in the outside world with hitting keys on a piano as a child. He quickly morphed his consciousness into a labyrinth of sonic machines, electronic devices and finally today, advanced, multi-layered computer processing. At each stage he moved deeper and deeper into the invisible landscape of coded information, searching all the while for an elusive sonic element. Is it so hard to imagine this journey won't eventually reach a symmetry break with the external world, and Richard will find himself entirely inside the matrix of his own consciousness, using radionic tools to fashion a music of the spheres?

Personal Radionics. Our effort to articulate and demonstrate a case for biological or Nature based intelligence through our experiments with plant and rock milli-voltages has elicited a not unexpectedly high degree of skepticism. What is hardest for well trained scientific minds and also for less well trained ordinary skeptics to accommodate is the idea of an all pervasive, numinous life energy that is filled with intelligence. We are used to experiencing energy in utilitarian forms such as power generation or communications, and in the familiar turbulence throughout nature. The hard nut to crack is the role emotion and feeling play (as energy) in bridging the divide between Human Intelligence and Nature Intelligence. Our capacity to feel allows us to get outside ourselves; thus, the role of art.

On the plane back from Minneapolis Todd and I were discussing the inertia-busting function of art, when the passenger to my left asked if I was a physicist. Hardly, I replied, just a submerging artist experimenting with sound. It so turned out our conversationalist was himself a Bach scholar and accomplished professional choirmaster ( Dr. Thomas Rossin of Exultate ). We couldn't resist the opportunity to play for him our plant recordings, and so the conversation began. While non-committal about what he heard from the plants, when the question arose about experiencing the inertia-busting characteristics of music, he had much to say.

I had asked whether in his choral experience he had ever experienced something like 'duende*' [tenure duende/ having soul]. Duende is the mysterious, dark force flamenco musicians speak of which arrives without warning, possessing and authenticating their art. In flamenco tradition, duende rarely makes an appearance during any public, commercial performance. It is mainly considered a private, sacred enchantment given only to the performances done purely for the sake of the art.

We have experienced the best aspects of bio-communication when it was entirely spontaneous and joyful, free of analytic probing and opportunistic demands. So, I was surprised when our traveling companion said that indeed, he had experienced in a public context that very experience of a powerful energy superimposing itself upon a performance, on two notable occasions. The first experience was the result of incrementally expanding emotional exuberance felt by the whole choir. Our companion said that at the peak, the energy literally pushed him off the podium. On the second occasion, the choir was singing in Poland in a small church following the liberation of that country from Soviet oppression. At the highest moment of public exhilaration, a small child was moved to walk alone down the aisle of the church and press her only doll into the hands of Dr. Rossin. This incomprehensible expression of selfless giving caused all in attendance to reach an extraordinary plateau of emotion and religious rapture, upon which our companion simultaneously experienced a state of transcendence.

So, what is this experience, this energy? We know it is often perceived in daily life as the product of a very emotionally charged situation. Consider for a moment that Nature Intelligence may be, may continually experience, such a totally Monist, unified, ego transcendent, purely immersive state of being, state of awareness at all times. Such an experience, when we allow it to touch our own individual lives, becomes a form of rapture. It blows away science, cognition, all duality. Is it only our investment in our individuality, with its fear of death, that filters such sustained contact with Nature? Do the subtle signals we think we hear coming from rocks and plants actually have more in common with love than with electricity?

"I have with me a whole treasure of learning, but where is the sigh of the morning and the tear of the early night?" Khwaja Hafiz

Duncan Laurie 3/7/08

-------------

* DUENDE, From Wikipedia:

"So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.

"Everything that has black sounds in it, has duende." (ie emotional 'blackness').

"This ‘mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained’ is, in sum, the spirit of the earth, the same duende that scorched Nietzsche’s heart as he searched for its outer form on the Rialto Bridge and in Bizet’s music, without finding it---"

"The arrival of the duende presupposes a radical change to all the old kinds of form, brings totally unknown and fresh sensations, with the qualities of a newly created rose, miraculous, generating an almost religious enthusiasm."

"All the arts are capable of duende, but where it naturally creates most space, as in music, dance and spoken poetry, the living flesh is needed to interpret them, since they have forms that are born and die, perpetually, and raise their contours above the precise present."

—García Lorca, Theory and Play of the Duende

Biomedical Projects

gordon — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:17:30 +0000

The human body is a cool piece of equipment and it's wonderful when we're blessed with one which works well. As a die-hard DIY'er I've always been fascinated by the signals that the body and brain generate in the course of our daily existence. Electrical signals are produced by the brain along with others generated by our muscles, the heart for example. Modern electrical components have made it possible for the hobbiest to construct his own equipment to tap into these signals and record them as digital information or translate them into sounds or graphics. Biofeedback and stress monitoring instruments can be home built at relativly low cost and even a modest computer can process EEG signals and use them to control game objects and cursors. You've probably read articles on this site describing the IBVA, a commercially available device for recording and utilizing brain signals. Here at the studio we use this along with DIY gear to tap into the electrical world of people, plants, and minerals. There are a few things to be aware of before you run out and grab the neighbor's skater kid for your experiments. It is not difficult to incinerate a volunteer when making the marriage of the body and electricity. Volunteers are hard enough to find without carbonizing them with ill designed electrical equipment and they may have family members who will dislike you for days and days thereafter. Be absolutely sure of what you are doing and read everything you can get your hands on concerning the body and electricity. If in doubt, DON'T! I 've been shocked by radio transmitting and receiving gear and it really, really, sucks. That said, here are a couple of sites to check out on this very subject. Enjoy.

This one has some open source stuff for EEG construction projects. I'm not sure how often it is updated though.

Catholic University of America offers this site with biomedical engineering projects.

Botanicalls Twitters

duncan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:16:54 +0000

Botanicalls Twitters: "
In case you hadn’t heard, we’ve made Botanicalls Twitter as a do-it-yourself example for people who like to-well-do it themselves. It’s the first step in making Botanicalls available to a wider audience, and the online press has taken note. In the last 48 hours, we’ve been graced by the attention of:
Make Magazine
CNet
Slashdot
Lifehacker
Gizmodo
Wired
…and even Business Week
Botanicalls Twitter would not have happened without both brilliant code and sage advice from Limor Fried. We also appreciate the support of Phil Torrone who inspired our Twitter venture and helped to make it a success. Botanicalls is a project from Kate Hartman, Kati London, Rebecca Bray and Rob Faludi.Senhas e Segredos do Windows XP - Tem senhas de jogos 2D toques de corneta em um novo Widget."

(Via Rob Faludi's Blog.)

Vid*a Lab Projects

gordon — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:03:44 +0000

This site (in Spanish) describes some second semester lab projects from 2007. These kids are doing a lot of the same things that interest us here in Rhode Island and their well done site bears a look. As a matter of fact, spend a little time browsing the entire popshop site.

Thunderbolts of the Gods

gordon — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:13:46 +0000

I've always been comforted by the thought that gravity would someday cause the cosmos to fall in upon itself as our expanding universe loses it's energy and begins a death spiral of compression and collision propelling us into some pinpoint singularity. Indeed, gravity has always been my friend and the pain of the occasional bike accident or slip and fall event has always been far outweighed by the fact that I've never fallen off the planet. Gravity has always been useful in that regard and I've never been inclined to search for a substitute but just when I thought that all was well with my universe along came these two fellows, David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill whose theories strive to upset the cosmic apple cart. Their investigation points the finger at electricity claiming it to be the glue holding everything together.... or more accurately, pushing it all apart. Their team has produced a one hour video which describes life in the "electric universe". "Thunderbolts of the Gods" will make you re-think everything you've been taught about astronomy, cosmology, and Star Trek. Enjoy!

Living Materials

duncan — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:18:31 +0000

Living Materials: "At the Artissima art fair last month in Turin, i discovered a new player on the local art scene: the Parco d'Arte Vivente (Park of Living Art).

It all started when i almost fell on my knees in front of an installation by Michel Blazy. The first time i saw his work was at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The installation Post Patman stank, rot, crumbled and formed mushrooms, attracted insects and birds but i love it.

The work on show at Artissima, Le tombeau du poulet aux quatre cuisses (The grave of the four-legged chicken), is a skeleton laying on a bed of earth and surrounded by mushroom. The skeleton looks indeed like the one of a chicken, a giant chicken and as it is made of dog biscuits (made themselves from animal products) will be slowly desintegrating over time.

The PAV was also exhibiting one of Jun Takita's sculpture Jusqu'aux recoins du monde, the sculpture of a brain recovered with bioluminescent algae. For years, the Paris-based artist has been interested in bioluminescence.

Jusqu'aux recoins du monde

According to traditional classification, photosynthesizing organisms
belong to the plant kingdom. Plants transform light into energy but are not capable of bioluminescence —that is, they cannot emit light. Excepting a few species like the dinoflagellates, which belong to both the plant and animal kingdoms, bioluminescence is found in only a few animal species. Biological evolution has not
given rise to an organism that can both consume light as energy and use that energy to create its own light. However, over the last few years, genetic manipulation has made it possible to create bioluminescent plants. These plants/nonplants artificial organisms transgress the laws of nature.

Light only Light, by Jun Takita. Image Yusuke Komiyama

It is easy to perceive a figure in the landscape within 10° of one’s line of sight (the size of the visual field of a fist held out at arm’s length). For example, constellations are based on the principle that one reads stars at a distance of up to about 11° from one another as part of a group. Even when we look at the sky, the human hand is the unit of reference for measuring an image. If an object exceeds this 10° visual field, we have to move our eyes in order to perceive it in its entirety. Vision is then constructed by the accretion of several images memorized by the brain. In 1998, the artist started to work on a garden project based on this phenomenon.

On the left, portrait of Jun Takita

The elevated garden is to be situated on top of a building in Tokyo. As Tokyo is a very polluted city, it is not unusual to see gardens being grown on the top buildings by inhabitants in order to cool down a bit the temperature of the city.

The central element of Takita's own garden is a mineral sculpture composed of three walls forming a cave and a bush pruned into a hemisphere. The inside of the cave is to be covered with a bioluminescent moss produced with genetic engineering technology. The moss will emit light via photosynthesis. The visitor is led to a viewpoint along the axis of the sculpture, where the bush is framed by the cave. The distance from this point to the bush will permit the eye to perceive the whole installation at once.

The visitor is invited to discover a visual experience made possible through genetic engineering. During the day, the light of the sun is much stronger than the one emitted through bioluminescence, therefore the form of the bush will be lit by the sun, and its shape will serve to distinguish it from a dark background. After sunset the opposite happens: the bioluminescent background will be broken up by the silhouette of the bush, forming a negative figure (via Takita's paper and the notes i took during the artist's presentation during the round table, titled Places and creative processes of the living arts, and organized by the Parco d'Arte Vivente at artissima).

Last week i went to the temporary headquarters of the PAV to check out their exhibition Living Materials. It closed yesterday but will be traveling to Austria. I do not have the details about that second show yet. But when i do, i'll let you know because Living Materials is a very charming exhibition.

Every work presented involves the public in a timed process cadenced by the cyclic rhythm of biological and ecological phenomena. Life and death are simultaneously present and aesthetically represented in the continuum of procedural works which ask us about the man-nature relationship in the age of biotechnology.

The works on show include Le Poulet and photos of Jun Takita's work but also:

Ennio Bertrand, The creator has a master plan (first created in 2003 under the title Lemon Sky and revamped for Living Materials).

An array of hundreds of lemons are pierced with small metal sheets, they are in fact Volta batteries supplied with citrus energy which powers tiny Leds, one every 4 lemons. Originally the lemons looked like the ones you can see on the image above but when i visited the PAV, the lemons were a yummy green as you can see on the image on the right. I actually liked that a lot, in yellow, they were too perfect, too plastic looking, but covered with decay they were more living than ever.

The artist writes: I imagined that the lemons during their 'work' of withering and decomposing would give back the sun stored by the tree in his fruits during its productive phase in form of small flares.

I think it's fascinating that a fruit of nature through an electronic device can palpitate for some days. It seems the proof to me of our dependence on the environment, of our tight and deep bond to nature.

The project proposes a reflection on the energetic resources of our planet and re-explores one of the artist's theme of predilection: time. Six months of ripening, several days of life for the work and very short flashes of light, like snapshots of the passing by of time.

The last work on show is Food Island, by Andrea Caretto & Raffaella Spagna. The complex water system feeds several interconnected little islands containing various natural elements: stones, plants or animals.

A pump dipped in a water container sends water which reaches each island through transparent tubes. The water produced through various natural mechanism or which is not needed by the island is then collected and sent back to the main water container. the whole installation constitutes a kind of hypertextual narration which explains phenomena of growth and transformation of the material, from inorganic to organic and vice-versa.

All my images.
and the press pictures from three sixty. Video interview of Michel Blazy.

(Via we make money not art.)

The Century of the Self

gordon — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:21:30 +0000

The good folks at BBC4 have produced a series of programs, four in all, which describe in detail how we are influenced by external forces in the conduct of our everyday lives. Learn how governments and especially marketers cater to our vanity and sexuality as they jockey for control of our preferences and behavior. Discover the true meaning of "the ad and the id". Sit back and enjoy these four 50 minute videos as Sigmund Freud and company prove to us what sick puppies we really are. I highly recommend these well done programs produced as only BBC can.

Silent Dialogue at the ICC, Tokyo

duncan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:03:57 +0000

Silent Dialogue at the ICC, Tokyo: "

Just as i was panicking that i wouldn't be able to post anything today because i had spent most of my time doing some silly shopping, enters Vicente Gutierrez. Our Tokyo correspondent went to visit the latest exhibition at ICC, swift as the light he wrote a few lines about it and thus saved my life. I like drama, you might not so let's go straight to his report from the show:

Currently at the NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC] in concrete-laden Tokyo is an exhibit devoted to nature’s inter-relationships within the ecosystem we share with plants and animals.

Focusing on the interaction between plants, animals and humans, or this ‘invisible communication’ of nature which our senses might not always perceive, the works in the Silent Dialogue exhibition exhibited make those signals visual and audible through the use of biosensors as well as other algorithm-based software programs. Relying on such simulations, the works on display are a true fusion of science, design and art and provide a glimpse into the secret lives of plants while revealing more about the human effect and affect within the ecosystem we share. Investigating how plants, animals, or insects communicate and behave offered new perspectives to the effect of making us more apt to the signals our environment sends in an era of increasing interaction from humans and technology.

Call ? Response, 2007, by tEnt [Tanaka Hiroya + Cuhara Macoto], with technical support by Kamiyama Yusuke

Call <-> Response by Tanaka Hiroya and Cuhara Macoto (who are working under the collaborative title, tEnt) simulates a natural environment for birds in an effort to derive and explore how they communicate. Attempting to communicate beyond human language, the software was designed to record, generate and layer simulated bird calls. Here, the coconut shell is fitted with a small speaker which emits varying bird calls via a continuous algorithm-based signal.

Bio Photon: Allelopathy, 2007, by Ando Takahiro

One of the most interactive works displayed was Bio Photon: Allelopathy by Ando Takahiro. As plants germinate and grow, photons are emitted from their leaves. They are invisible to our eyes but in his work Ando work visualizes the amount of photons via the discreet sensors which results in a hyper-sporadic display of flickering lights across the dome at light speed, if you will. Ando has intentionally set up two electric-current-generating for us, which upon touching, allow us to feel the currents that we couldn’t otherwise visualize.

Paphio in My Life, 2007, by Fujieda Mamoru + Dogane Yuji

Dogane Yuji, a botanist who has focused his research on orchids, collaborated with composer Fujieda Mamoru for Paphio in My Life, where the inaudible sounds of plants are picked up by connected wires then converted to manifest a plant’s ‘voice.’ As plants respond to environmental stress, simulated by varying vibrations induced by the artists’ algorithmic program, the plant’s ‘voices’ vary accordingly. By broadcasting such a dialog, Dogane hopes to bring us closer to plants through this glimpse into their life.

Orchisoid 03, 2003, by FUJIHATA Masaki + DOGANE Yuji

In Orchisoid 03, Dogane Yuji worked with renowned digital media artist Fujihata Masaki (some of his previous works include Unreflective Mirror and Beyond Pages) to better understand adaptation and homeostasis in plants. For this project, several orchids were again wired and set to experience a variety of vibrations from the shifting table they rest upon. The artists concluded that the physiology of the plants changed the same way as human brain wave patterns change in response to stress. And because the orchid’s wave-activity fluctuates in real time, rather quickly, Dogane recognized it as a sign of high-level information processing.

Interactive Plant Growing, 1992, by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau

Also on display were Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau's installation Interactive Plant Growing from 1992. Touch the plants and watch the screen fill up with a digital cascade of the plant’s leaves; still a great example of physical action into digital realization.

Ha, Ha! Your Mushrooms Have Gone, 2005, by Michael Prime

For a glance into the secret lives of mushrooms, Michael Prime affixed bio-sensors to various kinds of locally grown mushrooms to reveal a dialog we perhaps thought never even existed. From their docile setting in an aquarium, the bio-receptors broadcast the sounds of pulsating waves of noise through speakers in the installation space. The result- a surprising continuous drone that shifted tones rather sporadically revealing a brash, trance-like state of mushrooms- fascinating, surreal and surprising.

Until February 17, 2008 at the NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC].

All images Courtesy of ICC.

Fresh from our fruit & veggie aisle: Life Support Systems - Vanda, Night Garden, Post Patman, Upside Down Mushroom Room, Regulated Fool’s Milk Meadow, Living Letters, Real radish races on the net, Flora fights back, Plants racing for survival, etc

(Via we make money not art.)

The Way We Live Now: Mind of a Rock

duncan — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:39:23 +0000

By JIM HOLT

Published: November 18, 2007

Most of us have no doubt that our fellow humans are conscious. We are also pretty sure that many animals have consciousness. Some, like the great ape species, even seem to possess self-consciousness, like us. Others, like dogs and cats and pigs, may lack a sense of self, but they certainly appear to experience inner states of pain and pleasure. About smaller creatures, like mosquitoes, we are not so sure; certainly we have few compunctions about killing them. As for plants, they obviously do not have minds, except in fairy tales. Nor do nonliving things like tables and rocks.

Continue reading: The Way We Live Now: Mind of a Rock: "Is everything conscious?"

(Via NYT > Magazine.)

Duncan Laurie blogs

MAX in Ableton Live

Spinning Silk into Sensors

EMLI

The Return of Amateur Science

Scientists try to let the blind 'see' fish

aerostaticmusic.com relaunch

Duncan at The Stone, NYC - Dec 9th

devinesound.net

Preventing Forest Fires With Tree Power: Sensor System Runs On Electricity Generated By Trees

Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos

David Last - The Secret Life of Plants

Most Direct Evidence of Dark Energy Detected

The Geoglyphs of Teohuanaco

Earth's Cries Recorded in Space

Mind Meld III

Insects using plants as telephones

Richard Devine's "The Electronic Music Manuscript" loop and sample library available

Singing plants...

Rock Music paper posted

G. K. Chesterton Quote

David Wexler

Spark Festival, Richard Devine, Radionics, Neg-entropy and Duende*

Biomedical Projects

Botanicalls Twitters

V*i*d*a Lab Projects

Thunderbolts of the Gods

Living Materials

The Century of the Self

Silent Dialogue at the ICC, Tokyo

The Way We Live Now: Mind of a Rock

Vid*a Lab Projects