. media culture . visual
art . science . visual

Untiled Faces, fascinating maths

Nathan Selikoff, Untiled Faces, chiara ciociola, Untiled_faces.jpg At first glance the work “Untiled Faces” by Nathan Selikoff looks like a primitive videogame, a veteran of the '70s games room. By interacting with its toggle switches, however, one senses that what happens in the very small screens framed by dark, Spartan wood is a process far removed from that of a simple arcade. The device is based on the visual representation of chaotic systems, a complex mathematical  ... [ Continue ]


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art . science . visual

Particles, light spheres creating space

Particles, Daito Manabe, Motoi Ishibashi, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, particles_daito_manabe.jpg In the darkness our sense of place, space and time diminish and we are as lost as we are free to navigate. We are like particles adrift and while we may not require darkness to remind us, the LED-implanted synthetic spheres utilized in this installation by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi do just this. As the spheres track downward,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . software . visual

VidiMasher 3000, mashup on a screen

VidiMasher 3000, Mark Gunderson, The Evolution Control Committee, vidimasher_Mark_Gunderson.jpg The mashup master Mark Gunderson, aka The Evolution Control Committee, has been in the music plagiarism field for the last couple of decades. One of his latest tactical products (after so many others) is called VidiMasher 3000. It's a 122-centimeter rear-projected faux  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound art . visual

Quintetto, sounding goldfishes

Quintetto, Quiet Ensamble, quintetto_quiet_ensamble.jpg Neural issue # 37 came with a booklet on Zachary Lieberman's workshop at Fabrica. Here Lieberman asks the question: "How can we use code to create real-time animation that is lifelike and organic?" Back in 1986 Craig Reynolds gave one answer to this question. His “Boids” algorithm,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . interactive . media . software . visual

Link, interactive sculpture on convergence

Kimichi and Chips, Elliot Woods, Mimi Son, link_Mimi_Son_Elliot_Woods.jpg If your name is “Kimichi and Chips”, you define yourself a cross-disciplinary art & design studio and are based between London and Seoul, it should be quite a natural challenge to create an artwork about “Convergence”. This what Elliot Woods and Mimi Son did for Design Korea 2010 with the interactive piece  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound art . visual

SoLu, correspondence between audio and visual spectrum

André Rangel,SoLu, Andre_Rangel_solu.jpg Associating music and color as a concept can be traced back to the 16th century painter Arcimboldo, even if the most quoted modern example is the "Sarabet", a sort of "color organ" invented in 1918 by pianist Mary Hallock-Greenewalt. Nevertheless objective correspondences between color and sound are rare. André Rangel' "SoLu" is an installation which converts "the exponential spacing of the intervals  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . visual

Carsten Nicolai - Moiré Index

Die Gestalten Verlag, ISBN-13: 978-3899553086, 312 pages, August 1, 2010, English, carsten_nicolai_moire_index.jpg Die Gestalten Verlag, ISBN-13: 978-3899553086, 312 pages, August 1, 2010, English
Carsten Nicolai has multiple attitudes towards sound, art, science and graphic design, but they are almost perfectly consistent with each other. A follow-up to "Grid Index" (a comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems), this new heavyweight book is dedicated to moiré, the graphical pattern created when two grids are overlaid at an angle. The beauty of this graphical interference (which every  ... [ Continue ]


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art . dvd . sound art . visual

Luis Felipe Ortega, Israel Martinez - Triptych

Luis Felipe Ortega, Israel Martinez, Triptych, Aagoo Rec., dvd, 2011, ACO026, tryptich.jpg Aagoo Rec., dvd, 2011, ACO026
The symbiosis between a video artist and a musician can lead to unexpectedly effective synergies when both of them take on a shared territory to investigate. This is what happened to Luis Felipe Ortega and Israel Martinez who have produced intriguing audio-visual art about what they define as "the sculpted character of the landscape." Their joint multi-sensorial explorations have some peculiar traits. In fact,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . interactive . visual

Conversation Challenger, fighting with digital devices for attention

Studio Good One, Conversation Challenger, conversation_challenger.jpg The London-based Studio Good One collective has created a series of devices that interrogate face-to-face conversation and how technology impacts on it by physically embodying our reliance on digital communication.  ... [ Continue ]


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book . visual


Friedrich Kittler - Optical Media

optical_media.jpg Polity Press
, 2009
, 332 pages
, English, 
ISBN-13: 978-0745640914
Finally available in English after eight years, "Optical Media" is an influential book by one of the major and more controversial media philosophers: Friedrich Kittler. The book is the transcript of a fourteen-lecture series he presented at Humboldt-University, Berlin in 1999, and it's meant as a "popular exposition" (as John Durham Peters defines it in the revealing introduction) of  ... [ Continue ]


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dvd . music . visual

Fred Moth vs Ben Sheppee - 
av8ion ep


Fred Moth, Ben Sheppee, 
av8ion ep
, lightrhythm visuals
, dvd, 
2010, ep_av8ion.jpg lightrhythm visuals
, dvd, 
2010
The now expansive VJ scene has historically included quite a few talented designers fond of club music, coupling it with their visual skills. In the 2000s a few Vjing "labels" were born, producing a different range of products, aimed more at its own niche than to the general public. Lightrhythm Visuals, one such label, has produced a number of dvd "albums". These products are more often  ... [ Continue ]


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art . interactive . visual

Plane Scape, rubber bands exploded screen

Plane Scape,Wolfgang Bittner, Lyndsey Housden, Yoko Seyama, Jeroen Uyttendaele, Plane_Scape.jpg Immersive audiovisual environments are often associated with elaborate and cutting edge technologies. From Imax theaters to works such as Filmachine by Keiichiro Shibuya and Takashi Ikegami, impressive amounts of equipment are deployed to deliver high levels of sensory involvement. But staging less gear can be more effective: Plane Scape  ... [ Continue ]


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art . cd-rom . code . sound art . visual

Theo Burt, 
Colour Projections

Theo Burt, 
Colour Projections, CD-ROM
, Entr'acte
, E80, colour_projection.jpg CD-ROM
 Entr'acte
 E80
If the field of audiovisual production has two different poles (the sonified visual and the visualized sound) this work can be placed exactly in the middle. Colour Projections is software created by Theo Burt that calculates audio and minimal geometrical video conceived as single tracks of an album. Although the work has a technical web structure (it's viewed in a browser, starting from an  ... [ Continue ]


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media . mobile . visual

Joiner, collage camera

Joiner, collage camera, exonemo, Vicente Gutierrez, joiner.jpg The collage as an art form reminds of the way our vision works- the nanosecond twitches of focus that render our immediate visual environment. Japanese media duo exonemo have been working with this sentiment along with some inspiration from David Hockney's 'The Joiners' series, to develop an iPhone application whereby photos are instantly collaged and made manipulable. Bearing the same  ... [ Continue ]


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art . interactive . visual

Phase = Order, escaping the screen

Phase = Order, Joris Strijbos, phase_order.jpg In the field of expanded cinema the two-dimensio- nality of the projection screen has long been a limitation that artists have attempted to overcome through many different strategies. Rotterdam-based Joris Strijbos, member of the ensemble Macular, has found a way to take audio-visual media out of its habitual constraints. Recovering the legacy of  ... [ Continue ]


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art . video . visual

Kapitaal, X-ray public space

kapitaal, studio smack, kapitaal.jpg In a black environment of shapes and garbled sounds someone is lurking. The viewer walks through an environment which could well be that of a first-person shoot-em-up videogame: a jungle of logos, text, bright displays and signs. It's not an imaginary place. It is an X-ray image of  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . media . visual

(edited by) Alka Pande, Nils Röller - Visual Arts, The India Habitat Centre's Art Journal

Alka Pande, Nils Röller, Visual Arts, The India Habitat Centre's Art Journal, India Habitat Centre, volume 9, India, English, 2009, visual_arts_india_habitat.jpg India Habitat Centre, volume 9, April 2008 - March 2009, India, English, 2009
How much we really know about artists using communication technologies in countries not deeply involved in the art market? Not much, of course, and just thinking about that gives the impression that we're missing out on a lot of culture. India is certainly one of these territories. Since the Dutch-Indian establishment of Sarai in New Delhi, there was an entry point in a country  ... [ Continue ]


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interactive . music . sound . visual

Otto, touching sound samples

otto, luca de rosso, otto_luca_de_rosso.jpg Luca De Rosso offers to all those who have dreamed of manipulating a digital sample by literally touching it with their hands, a way to turn their dreams into reality. "Otto", the name of this small device designed and built by the Italian designer, is not a simple controller: it is a component integrating hardware and  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . visual

R. Klanten, N. Bourquin, S. Ehmann, T. Tissot - Data Flow 2: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design

R. Klanten, N. Bourquin, S. Ehmann, T. Tissot - Data Flow 2: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design, Die Gestalten Verlag, English, Germany, ISBN-13: 978-3899552782, 2010 data_flow.jpg Die Gestalten Verlag, ISBN-13: 978-3899552782, English, Germany, 2010
According to Olia Lialina: "Two ideas have occupied the minds of new media designers for several decades: humanization of computers and the materialization of digital phenomena." While the former is far from truly being realized, the latter is a huge trend, especially when it comes to data visualization. Quantities and relationships  ... [ Continue ]


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art . media . tv . visual

Curious Displays, digital display becomes part of the house

Curious Displays, Julia Tsao, curious_displays.jpg In the multi-faceted world of digital imaging the ability to connect on a visceral level with an audience is becoming a main concern of any production. Often we hear the phrase, "It jumped out of the screen" when hearing someone recall a spectacular scene from a film. Although this is usually just a figure of  ... [ Continue ]


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art . dvd . music . sound . video . visual

Yoshihide Sodeoka - Video Metal

yoshihide_sodeoka_video_metal.jpg C505, Content004, USA, 2009, English
This DVD is a real visual and sound trip. Master of visualization concepts, Yoshihide Sodeoka, is here enjoying the freedom of experimenting with both visual forms and ideas. The three pieces launch the user into an obscure and hypnotising video universe. The heavy metal atmosphere is made precarious  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . software . visual

Iman Moradi. Ant Scott, Joe Gilmore, Christopher Murphy - Glitch: Designing Imperfection

Iman Moradi. Ant Scott, Joe Gilmore, Christopher Murphy, Glitch, Designing Imperfection, Mark Batty Publisher, glitch_designing_imperfection.jpg Mark Batty Publisher, ISBN 978-0979966668, USA, 2009, English
Error, and even more importantly, its perception and visual beauty are at the heart of the "glitch art" movement. Be it ethereal, as with a few seconds of uncertainty in the graphic rendering, or fixed, as a more or less stable bug in a file, the glitch is a recurrent, yet peripheral visual component. This is the  ... [ Continue ]


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art . privacy . visual

Stolen Moments, a human webcam in New York

Stolen Moments, Yasmine Chatila, stolen_moments.jpg The process of getting used to being constantly watched and monitored by webcams, social networks and unscrupulous invaders of our privacy has certainly had an effect on our expressions and movements. Our everyday gestures have necessarily taken on an artificial quality due to the feeling of  ... [ Continue ]


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book . music . sound . visual

edited by Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund - Audio.Visual: On Visual and Related Media

Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund, Audio.Visual On Visual and Related Media, audio_visual.jpg Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, ISBN 978-3897902930, Germany, 2009, English
Cornelia and Holger Lund established and run the Fluctuating Images gallery in Stuttgart since 2004, and in 2009 they relocated to Berlin. Their activity was centered on connecting the local audiovisual artist community (with a special care for the VJ scene) with the international one through works and  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . science . software . visual

Sherry Turkle - Simulation and Its Discontents

simulation_and_its_discontents.jpg The MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262012706, USA, 2009, English
Starting with two ethnographic studies she undertook twenty years apart, Sherry Turkle is able to make a timely investigation in this book, addressing the role played by simulation in higher education, physics, chemistry and architecture research. The pivotal perception shift that is pervading the younger "world creators" seems highly risky, especially when seen from the previous generation's perspective,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . performance . sound . visual

scoreLight, playing contours

Alvaro Cassinelli, Daito Manabe, Yusaku Kuribara, scoreLight, score_light.jpg Blind people have a different conventional way to "see." They use a walking stick to sense borders around them, and their task is made easier when they can use a special rubber guidance route on the street. This process is not too conceptually distant from pickup and vinyl mechanics, and it's also the  ... [ Continue ]


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CD . book . music . sound . visual

Francesco Brunotti/Various Authors - Nocturne

Francesco Brunotti, Various Authors, Nocturne, Persistencebit Records, nocturne.jpg Persistencebit Records, Italy, 2009
This is a product in the Bitmedia series, developed by the eclectic label Persistencebit. It is devoted to the production of multimedia works related to the ambient and modern electronics scenes. It's a book of photographs by Francesco Brunotti properly entitled "Nocturne" that includes a cd album stuck to the  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . mobile . psychogeography . science . visual

Nato Thompson and Independent Curators International - Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

experimental_geography.jpg Melville House, ISBN 978-0091636586, USA, 2008, English
The representation of space, the reclaiming of space and the recoding of space through a collective negotiation of coordinates and facts are a few of the issues that "geography" at large has posed after our spatial perceptions have been enormously amplified by the internet. A full set of new "visions"  ... [ Continue ]


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art . floppy disk . media . software . videogame . visual

Florian Cramer - nkdlunch.mp4, tapetrff.mp4

Florian Cramer, nkdlunch.mp4, tapetrff.mp4, floppy_films.jpg Floppy Films, The Netherlands, 2009
Disappeared from our desktops first because of cd-rom burners and then (after regretting losing the floppy's quick data portability) because of USB keys, the floppy disk is still supported by major OSs, but is often found sleeping in quantities in boxes as old relics. The floppy disk (3.5") has been the medium  ... [ Continue ]


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art . cd+ . software . sound . visual

v4w.enko - Harmonic Ratio

v4w.enko, Harmonic Ratio, Kvitnu, v4w_enko_harmonic_ratio.jpg cd+, 2009, Kvitnu
This could be defined as "black and white music": the usual minimal experimental conventions are taken for granted, but then impeccably made consistent in both sound and visual forms. Consistency, in fact, is one of the preponderant virtues that Eugene Vashchenko (a.k.a. v4w.enko) has been endowed  ... [ Continue ]


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art . media . video . visual

TimeStopper, Stop time like a "Hero"

Kenichi Okada, Time Stopper, time_stopper.jpg Today's traditional Single Lens Reflex (SLR) digital and analog cameras are meant to do one thing, and perform this task well. Their aim is to take a picture from the vantage point of a lone photographer in order to produce a replica of that person's frame of vision at a specific place in time. Responding to this  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound . visual

Strobovj, stroboscopic sequencer for vjing

Gijs Gieskes, Strobovj, strobovj.jpg Gijs Gieskes is an incredible machine inventor (as well as an esteemed VJ and performer). Among his latest creations Strobovj deserves particular attention: it's a sequencer for vjing that uses the working principle of the stroboscope: looking at a spinning wheel. The machine created by this eclectic artist is not just limited to real-time  ... [ Continue ]


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art . visual

Ocean_v1, faces database

Masayuki Akamatsu, Wolf Nkole Helzle, ocean_v1.jpg Ocean_v1 by Masayuki Akamatsu and Wolf Nkole Helzle is a computer screen with a video camera on the top, that records the face of the person in front of it. As well as the facial details, it notes any movements made by the person. On the screen, a continual rush of faces are displayed, sometimes as many as sixty  ... [ Continue ]


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art . net . psychogeography . software . visual

Antidatamining, a cartography of chaos.

Antidatamining, RYBN collective, Marika Dermineur, Kevin Bartoli, Jean-Marie Boyr, antidatamining.jpg Anti datamining is a transversal research project based on the recovery and the viewing/visualization of internet financial data flows. It aims at creating audiovisual environments written, fed and updated in real-time. The project finds its roots in the Data Mining practice, which focuses on producing optimum  ... [ Continue ]


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book . media . visual

R. Klanten, N. Bourquin, S. Ehmann, F. van Heerden - Data Flow, Visualising Information in Graphic Design

R. Klanten, N. Bourquin, S. Ehmann, F. van Heerden, Die Gestalten Verlag, ISBN 9783899552171, Data Flow, Visualising Information in Graphic Design, data_flow.jpg Die Gestalten Verlag, ISBN 9783899552171, Germany, 2008, English
There was a clear need for a luscious book about the many, different, fascinating manifestations of what used to be called "data porn" (raw data visualized in beautiful ways), and this book seems to amply fill the void. Nowadays an infograph seems to be one of the myriad levels of an elusive reality and,  ... [ Continue ]


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