Andy Huntington/ Drew Allan: Cylinder (”Seahorses”, “Designed”, “Market”)

Cylinder by Andy Huntington and Drew Allan is an elegant series of data sculpture based on sound analysis. A mapping of the frequency and time domains produces cylindrical forms representing the spatial characteristics of the sound input. Physical versions of the digital 3D models are then 3D printed using stereolithography.

The idea of mapping sound to space is not unfamiliar. The Cylinder project shows similar strategies to those used in the exhibition Frozen, which showed sound represented as a continous space rather than as a one-dimensional signal. However, Cylinder is from 2003, predating Frozen and making it somewhat of an early example of the data sculpture genre.

There is a tangential similarity between Huntington’s pristine objects and Booshan & Widrig’s Binaural object. But in fact the spiky geometries of both works are a result of the numeric data underlying the form. Any data set will yield inherent patterns, and in the case of digital sound two “defaults” present themselves: The waveform (a 1D graph) and the spectral map found through FFT analysis, which represents a 2D map of spectral energies in the time domain. Any translation of these numeric representations into visual form must grapple with the fact that while they may be faithful representations of the data, they rarely give a good idea of how the sound is experienced by a human listener.

The Cylinder series show a range of different waveforms, some showing an apparent orderly structure with others suggesting a noisier sound input. Titles like “Seahorse”, “Design” and “Breath” imply the source sounds used to produce the forms. Their success as aesthetic objects derive from their complexity as well as from the clean quality given by the 3D printing process.

Schmidt & Pohflepp: Social Collider / William Forsythe & ACCAD: Synchronous Objects

A disclaimer is in order: The following post is not original content, rather it is a collection of links provided by various people on a private mailing list. The initial request (from Memo Akten) was for “really hot data visualization”, and the following suggestions were made by some fairly knowledgeable people.

They are presented here as an unedited list of links, they are listed in the order they appeared on the list. Some are fairly new projects while others are well-known canonical works. Two new favorites are shown above, namely Social Collider and Synchronous Objects.

Some pseudo-random Info Viz links

• Tom Carden: “As always VisualComplexity and Infosthetics are good places to start.” Tom’s Delicious bookmarks on the subject is a treasure trove in its own right.
• A good survey article by Mitchell Whitelaw: Art Against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice
• Data Flow is an excellent book from Die Gestalten presenting an unconventional eye to visualization practices.
• Karsten Schmidt recommends:
  • The ever-present Ben Fry: benfry.com/projects (Ben’s blog is an excellent read, by the way)
  • Martin Wattenberg et al.: History Flow
  • Marius Watz: Knight Capital Group
  • Tom Carden’s work, see Stamen and www.tom-carden.co.uk.
  • Karsten Schmidt & Sascha Pohflepp: Socialcollider (a Twitter visualization made as an experiment for Google Chrome)
  • Karsten Schmidt: Base-26
• William Forsythe and ACCAD (lead generative designer Matthew Lewis): Synchronous Objects
• Emily Gobeille & Theodore Watson: Zanyparade (programmed elements combined with hand-drawn forms)
• Syl Eckermann & Gerald Nestler: Plastic Trade-Off
• Edward Tufte: Ask E.T. forum

Microblogs like Twitter allow for a very immediate communication that requires less of a commitment than a regular blog. A 500 word blog post might take a few hours to write, whereas a 140 character long Twitter update only takes a few minutes. The interaction between Twitter users is also more explicit than is typical for blogs, creating a distributed conversation that at best can be thought of as a hive mind.

Here is the feed from twitter.com/generatorx so far:

• Visualization: 2008 Presidential Candidate Donations: McCain vs. Obama http://is.gd/3iPS
• Erik Natzke goes to NextFest: http://is.gd/3mCb
• Martin Wattenberg talks to WIRED about big text data: http://is.gd/3mzI
• Knowledge Cartography – cartography as tool for communication and the production of meaning: http://is.gd/3lma Video: http://is.gd/3lmj
• Media Facades 2008 in Berlin looks interesting: http://is.gd/3kQQ
• Blinkenlights: Oldie but Goodie. http://is.gd/3irX Now with a library for Processing for creating Blinkenlights movies.
• Maxalot presents the projection series “Processing Light” tonight at Todaysart, The Hague: http://is.gd/3a9t.
• @anfischer has posted nice documentation of recent work on Flickr: http://is.gd/3a2a
• Podcast from Die Gestalten about Data Flow, their new book about visualization: http://is.gd/37Lm
• Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective http://is.gd/35jU, MASS MoCA
• Vizualizar’08: Database City – Call for papers http://is.gd/33bV. The seminar will be at Medialab Prado, curated by Jose Luis De Vicente.
• The Piksel festival in Bergen has posted calls for their “abstract code real code” theme: http://is.gd/2Ytd
• Mitchell Whitelaw has an interesting new series: Limits to Growth http://is.gd/2WIR. See also his Flickr: http://is.gd/2WIU
• @toxi retweet : new blog post: Generative design in 4096 bytes or less (Will Wright & the 4k demoscene) http://is.gd/2UFj
• WMMNA has a nice summary of C.STEM 2008: Breeding Objects http://is.gd/2VJV.
• CORE.FORMULA has a nice blog post about Austrian sculptor Erwin Hauger: http://is.gd/2TIF. See also Flickr:http://is.gd/2TIO
• C.STEM 2008 – BREEDING OBJECTS currently underway in Turin, feat. fabbing and generative art. http://is.gd/2OTX
• Esther Stocker makes wonderful installations of grid structures in 2D and 3D: http://is.gd/2OTM
• New issue of Vague Terrain about curating net-based art, guest edited by CONT3XT.NET. http://is.gd/2DdM
• Blog post from @arikan: From Network Diagram to Structured Text http://tinyurl.com/5kb8g5
• C.STEM 2008 in Turin has a nice lineup of fabbing works : http://is.gd/2mEl (In Italian)
• Jeff Clark is doing some nice visualization work with a focus on social media: http://www.neoformix.com/
• Just created a Generator.x Twitter feed to compensate for long breaks between blog posts…

Fischer & Maus: Reflection, Widrig & Booshan: Binaural

5 Days Off MEDIA: Frozen
Wed 2 through Sat 26 July 2008
Melkweg Mediaroom & Paradiso, Amsterdam

• Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus (DE)
• Leander Herzog (CH)
• Marius Watz
• Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan (UK)
• Sound: Freiband / Frans de Waard (NL)
• Sound: Alexander Rishaug (NO)

Frozen (part of the 5 Days Off MEDIA festival) is an exhibition of experiments in the representation of sound in media beyond the auditory. It examines the sound signal as a virtual space, presenting possible mappings that visualize or interpret the structures contained within the soundwaves.

Frozen was proposed and commissioned by Jan Hiddink and the 5 Days Off MEDIA festival in Amsterdam, and consists exclusively of original work. It was conceived with Generator.x 2.0 as a conceptual reference (all four artists in the show were also involved in Generator.x 2.0), but with a clearly defined focus: The representation of sound as spatial structures, realized as physical objects through the use of digital fabrication technologies.

For more information, see the documentation in the Frozen Flickr set, Leander Herzog’s FFT set or the blog posts by Benjamin Maus and Andreas Nicolas Fischer.

Leander Herzog: Untitled / Marius Watz: Sound memory (Oslo Rain Manifesto)

Over the past years, there has been an enormous development in the field of live-presented audio-visual performance art. Owing to digital techniques, image and sound are connected in a way that was previously unthinkable. Frozen is headed in the opposite direction. Frozen pulls the plug and presents audio art, prints, and sculptures as independent, but interconnected works of art.

In the Mediaroom at the Melkweg multi-channel sound pieces can be experienced over an advanced speaker setup, accompanied by sound in a "frozen" form: Images and sculptural objects made using sound as input. These artworks use audio analysis and custom software processes to extract meaningful data from the sound signal, creating a mapping between audio and other media. Frozen will feature digital prints as well as four "sound sculptures" created using digital fabrication technology such as rapid prototyping, CNC and laser cutting, which allow for the direct translation of a digital model into physical form.

Frozen arose in collaboration with the Norwegian artist and curator Marius Watz, whose Generator.x project investigates the implications of generative systems and computational models of creation. The recent exhibition Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen brought together artists and architects to explore the potential of this new mode of creation.

‘Audio sculptures’ will be on display by Andreas Nicolas Fischer (DE) & Benjamin Maus (DE), Leander Herzog (CH), Marius Watz (NO) and Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan (UK). These sculptures are based on audioworks by Freiband (Nl, Frans de Waard), and Alexander Rishaug (No).

Frozen is presented in the Melkweg Mediaroom and at Paradiso.

5 Days Off MEDIA is part of the 5 Days Off festival for electronic music from Wed 2 through July 6. 5 Days Off MEDIA presents three themes: Crosswire, Frozen and Roots. Locations: Melkweg, Paradiso, Dutch Institute for Media Art and Heineken Music Hall.

Paul Prudence: Talysis live in Venice (see also pt. #1 and #2)

Paul Prudence is known as the author of the excellent Dataisnature, but also increasingly for his impressive output of generative artworks. Having migrated from Flash to the more powerful VVVV, he’s now focusing on audio-responsive generative systems that evoke organic 3D spaces. A good example of his work is Talysis, shown above in live performance during the "Tomorrow Now" event at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, Italy last year.

Talysis mimics analog video feedback systems, recursively transforming a geometric form through a series of render passes until a crystalline form emerges. The patterns produced seem unstable, constantly about to morph into new configurations. The strict symmetry evokes a sense of folding and unfolding movement, as though one was watches fragments of a 4-dimensional form projecting into Cartesian space.

Be sure to read Paul’s own post about feedback: Chaotic fingerprints and space-time labyrinths. There is also a clip #1 and #2.

Brandon Morse: Procedural animation

The stark videos of Brandon Morse present the viewer with excercises in tension, set tableaux in which structures morph and twist under physical constraints. Stripped-down architectural forms that ought to exhibit the rigidity of highrise buildings instead engage in a tug-of-war, the result of a string simulation distributing kinetic force through a network of nodes.

Morse seems to delight in setting up scenarios where seemingly ordered constructs rapidly degenerate under the influence of virtual force, which can only be observed through the dramatic effects it exerts. The end result is a state of irrecoverable chaos, brought about by causal simulated chain of action and reaction.

Unlike software-based generative artworks that exhibit endless timelines, Morse’s videos (created in the high-end animation package Houdini) display a clear dramaturgy. But rather than being a side effect of their status as “canned” video, the presence of an explicit beginning and end is here part and parcel of the work’s logic, reinforcing the movement towards the inevitable.

Favorite setups include explosions and collapses, dryly observed through an impartial camera that merely records the inevitable. Work titles like Cumulus_1 and Big Bang refer to physical simulations. Others, like Preparing for the inevitable (a particle system tornado bearing down on a wireframe house), are more explicitly apocalyptic. But while the implication of doom is clear, the image is deliberately kept abstract and artificial. Lacking a focus for projected empathy, the viewer is left with the sense of observing a scientific experiment, a computer-generated Armageddon minus the carnage.

Brandon Morse: "¡" (still from procedural animation)

Brandon Morse is represented by Conner Contemporary. For more examples of his work, visit his site Coplanar.org.

The video shown above was posted on Morse’s Flickr stream as a test of the new Video on Flickr feature. Hopefully more videos will start appearing on the Generator.x Flickr pool as a result, although the Generator.x channel on Vimeo is still our official choice for posting animated work.

Serero Architects: EIFFEL_DNA, generative design for extension of Eiffel Tower

Update: It’s now clear that the news about the Serero project for the Eiffel Tower is a hoax, as seen on Archinect and NY Times. Thanks to Sarrach for the tip.

Good news for anyone planning to visit that Parisian icon, the Eiffel Tower: A competition for an extension of the tower’s public areas aims to reduce wait times and increase its visitor capacity. And best of all, the winning entry was produced through a generative design process.

Serero Architects have proposed an extension of the top plateau of the tower, using a carbon Kevlar structure capable of carrying the weight of visitors venturing out onto the observation deck to take in the beauty of the French capital. Without any physical modification to the existing structure, it will double the available floor surface.

The generative script was inspired by the cross bracing beams that give the Eiffel Tower its architectural signature, generating 3 interconnected woven forms. The result is a nice combination of the current architectural trend of sub-divided surfaces and the Art Nouveau flourishes of the original tower. Considering that many Parisians hated the tower when it was first built, it will be interesting to see how they react to this revision of their shared heritage.

See Serero Architects for more of their projects involving generative design. Via Madeincalifornia, a great blog about computational architecture.

Generator.x 2.0: Disassembled / Theverymany: Aperiodic_Vertebrae

Saturday was the last day of the Generator.x 2.0 exhibition at [DAM]Berlin. The occasion was marked with an informal curator talk, followed by Q+A. The 1-month show has had a great reception, proving popular both with the Transmediale crowd and the general art viewing public. While it’s always nice to reach with a community of one’s peers, reaching “regular people” is extra satisfying.

A slightly less enjoyable task was the disassembly of the exhibition in preparation for shipping. It is always bittersweet moment to see an exhibition disassembled and stuck in the back of an old Toyota Corrolla. See the following image to get an impression of this anti-climactic view.

Thankfully, any sadness was alleviated by knowing that 24 hours after being packed into this car, the works arrived safely in Turin, Italy to be part of the SHARE Festival. Bruce Sterling is the guest curator of this year’s festival, the theme of which is “Manufacturing”. After Bruce attended to the opening of Generator.x 2.0 we started discussing the possibility of taking the show to SHARE, a plan that will come to fruition tomorrow when the exhibition re-opens in Turin.

Works from fabbing workshop at HyperWerk, Basel

A few of the pieces from Berlin won’t be on display in Turin, for instance Aperiodic_Vertebrae by Theverymany aka Marc Fornes and Skylar Tibbits. This ambitious installation turned out to be too complex for the show at [DAM]Berlin, and so we sadly had to display a creative deconstruction of the intricate polygon structure instead of the cantilever bridge-like form it was meant to be. But now there is the exciting news that Skylar and Marc are producing a reworked and more stable version for NODE08 in Frankfurt. We look forward to seeing documentation of it fully built.

A few pieces have been also been added, the results of a fabbing workshop at HyperWerk that followed on the heels of the Berlin workshop and featured some of the same people. Martin Fuchs has provided some intriguing polygon forms in paper and cardboard that he didn’t have time to finish in Berlin, and Leander Herzog has produced a selection of plastic branching structures that point towards an organic exploration of plastic as material.

As the project now finally winds down, we wish to express our gratitude to everybody who contributed to making Generator.x 2.0 such a great even, in particular the following:

• Club Transmediale, in particular the curators Jan Rohlf and Oliver Baurhenn who gave the project the green light and supported it wonderfully through its various phases.
• Anke Eckardt, for being an excellent producer both for the workshop and for the concert evening.
• [DAM]Berlin and Wolf Lieser, for providing the gallery space and much-needed help in turning a big mess into a presentable exhibition in the space of a single afternoon.
• The Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and its crew, for providing everything from technical support to much-needed coffee.
• Lasern and Martin Bauer, for making it possible to have a laser cutter on site, and for helping out with laser know-how.
• HyperWerk Institute for Postindustrial Design, for fabbing support and for contributing a quota of skilled students.
• The Office For Contemporary Art Norway for supporting the project financially.
• Bruce Sterling and Luca Barbeni of the SHARE Festival, for taking the show to Italy and showing it to a new audience.

Finally, we wish to thank all the participants for their enthusiasm and generous sharing of skills during the workshop. It was a pleasure to work with you. We can only hope that Generator.x 2.0 will result in new networks being formed, with interesting projects as a result.

Skot (Frank / Gmachl): aka (audio by General Magic) from Tina Frank on Vimeo.

We have posted about the Vienna scene and the Austrian Abstracts here on previous occasions, but the video work that was central to that movement has generally not been available for viewing online. Therefore, it’s with great pleasure we see that Tina Frank has posted some early videos to Vimeo. Let’s hope other artists follow her initiative, it would be nice to have an online archive of these early experiments somewhere.

Shown above is the video AKA by Skot, produced for Gasbook 4. Skot was the name used by Tina Frank and Mathias Gmachl for a number of collaborations from 1996 to 2000. Gmachl is also one of the founders of farmersmanual, a collective that was central to the Vienna scene. “Aka” means “red” in Japanese, and the video was made with Image/ine software from Steim, one of the very first softwares to support realtime processing of video on a regular computer.

Frank created the video "iii" below by taking digital audio files of the music by Peter Rehberg (Pita) and opening them as raw pixel data in Photoshop. An oval image mask was superimposed, giving a more specific form to the resulting video. The result is classic glitch, taking a signal of a given form and deliberately misinterpreting it as something else.

More videos on Tina Frank's Vimeo stream.

NODE08 - Forum for Digital Arts

NODE08 is a new festival for digital art set to to take place in Frankfurt April 5-12. The near-final programme is now out, and it is shaping up to be a powerful event indeed. While the topic is realtime art in general, the event is loosely based around the VVVV tool, making it the first VVVV-centric festival ever. With a full week of workshops, exhibits, concerts and live visuals, it should be a treat not just for VVVV aficionados, but for anyone interested in digital art.

The lecture program yields heavy-hitting names like Casey Reas, Herbert W. Franke, Paul Prudence, Verena Kuni, Theverymany and Berthold Scharrer. The many workshops will feature hands-on topics like “vvvv for Beginners”, “Shader Programming” and “Microcontroller And Sensor Handling”. Not all the workshops are about VVVV, for instance Casey Reas will give a tutorial on printing-related strategies using Processing. In any case there should be plenty of practical input to take home.

On the performance side of things generative VJs like Onoxo, Desaxismundi and Elektromeier promise to make the evening events interesting. The ever-present VVVV guru David Dessens aka Sanch will be performing under the new project “VA” with Nushitzu.

NODE08 is part of the Luminale light art festival, which will feature works by NODE08 participants. Have a look at the NODE08 web site for details on the programme as well as ticket booking. It’s guaranteed to be an event worth catching.

Clarification regard VVVV: Joreg from the VVVV group has asked us to clarify that VVVV is no longer produced by Meso, but rather by a group of 4 developers known as the “VVVV group” (two of whom work at Meso). This is a change from the early days when VVVV was maintained directly by Meso.

As a total malapropos, Meso has one of the best company mottos we’ve seen in a while: “Unimpressed by technology since 1982″.