Art Events Data Table

Live sound performance using DIY sound instruments, circuit bended toys and drum machine.

The House of Natural Fiber (HONF) was founded in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 1999 as a new media art laboratory. Yogyakarta is a unique and autonomous city that is well known for its cultural and historical heritage and as one of the main centers of higher education in Indonesia. HONF was one of a number of reactions of unsatisfied young people in facing an uncertain future with the political and economic restructuring after the restoration of civil society.

HONF brings together local artists (ranging from digital musicians and graphic designers to computer programmers, scientists and engineers) to use new technologies and knowledge to solve local problems in creative and culturally relevant ways. HONF is home to digital artists, activists, computer programmers, and scientists. The mission of HONF is to educate local Indonesians in using new technologies while developing partnerships to come up with creative solutions to existing social problems.

The myth of self-containment is counterbalanced by the promise of fluid connectivity, enhancement and exchange. No longer exclusively private, we wear our vital organs and use them as body language. Wearable Body Organs is an organ and a tool.

Social codes and identities are implied, imposed, and played With. Wearable Body Organs are visible play-use objects-devices-equipment that both offer context-sensitive functionality for their wearers and simultaneously announce their own need for existence by being used in public without being hidden and small as is the trend with consumer gadgets and self-assisting devices – hearing aids, PDAs, artificial organs, and colostomy bags).

ScreamBody, CryBody, SleepBody, EatBody, HoldBody, FightBody, RelaxBody, HouseBody – rather than being hidden and made to go unnoticed, these “products” intend to be noticed, as this is key in their functionality – they are social-critical activists. These fashionable identity negotiators are designed as transitional objects, to be helpful in taming a feared access of energies. ScreamBody, one in the series of Wearable Body Organs, is a portable space for screaming. When a user needs to scream, but is in any number of situations where it is just not permitted, ScreamBody silences the user’s screams so they may feel free to vocalize without tear of environmental retaliation, and at the same time it records the scream for later release. Participants access sensorial energies that have been implicitly or explicitly put to sleep by enculturation.

Quadraphone consists of two groups of four people who wander freely around the various venues of the festival and other public spaces. Each member of each quartet wears a battery-powered, high-fidelity speaker on their torso, counterbalanced by a backpack containing the battery pack. Each member also wears or carries a microphone.

At any given moment, either the microphones or the speakers of each quartet are active, but never at the same time. The two quartets are wiretessty connected, so that the microphones of one quartet become the sources for the speakers of the other quartet, or vice versa. Thus, a quadraphonic soundscape is telematically transferred from one space to another. The members of the quartets are also in communication with each other through headsets so that they can coordinate their movements and actions, switching roles )from listeners to speakers) at any given moment.

Quadraphone takes its inspiration from the technology of quadraphonic sound, a recording technique that had its heyday in the 1970s, and can be seen as an early form of immersive virtual reality.

The Tactical Cartography Command Centre will serve as a space which allows ISEA participants to explore several web-based and mobile cartography applications as interactive VR environment in 3D.

The Tactical Cartography Command Centre will serve as a space which allows ISEA participants to explore several web-based and mobile cartography applications, and general the field of ‘locative media’. It will use a variety of web-cartography applications to display: Geographic Information Systems [GIS) databases of GPS waypoints, climatological data, geological data, local historical data, and geo-encoded information produced specifically for ISEA by this project and hopefully by other ‘geo’ projects at ISEA as well.

Radio Astronomy is a collaboration between radioqualia and radio telescopes located throughout the world. Together we are creating ‘radio astronomy’ in the literal sense – a radio station devoted to broadcasting audio from our cosmos.

Radio Astronomy will be a live net.radio station. It will also broadcast Live on-air via FM radio in selected locations around the world including Helsinki during the period of ISEA. Radio Astronomy will also be installed as a sound installation within the URSA observatory in Helsinki.

Listeners will hear the acoustic output of radio telescopes live. The content of the transmission and sound installation will depend on the objects being observed by our partner telescopes. On any given occasion Listeners may hear the planet Jupiter and its interaction with its moons, radiation from the Sun, activity from far-off pulsars or other astronomical phenomena. If the telescopes are not making active observations when a listener tunes in or visits the installation, a broadcast will play which will feature archival data collected during past observations.

The Makrolab project began in 1994 and was first realized during Documenta X in 1997. Its final state will be as a permanent art/science/tactical media station on the Antarctic in 2007 with primary research focus on telecommunications, migrations and climate. Up to now, the project has been set up in Germany, Scotland, Slovenia, Australia and Italy, with future plans for India, Canada and South Africa.

The Makrolab project was born in 1994 during the wars, that were raging In the former Yugoslavia. Its initial purpose was to function as an autonomous and mobile performance/tactical media environment as it was explained during one of the first conceptual presentations of the project at ISEA94. Ten years later, the project has grown into a complex set of technological, political and environmental subdivisions and phases with the final aim of establishing a permanent art/science/tactical media laboratory and station on the only transnational territory of the planet, the Antarctic, focusing the research on the three global fields of interest for the project, telecommunications, climate and migrations.

TheMakrolab-UNTP (unmanned network tactical phase) setup, together with the TRUST-SYSTEM S-77CCR platform is a specific net and geo centric focused phase of the project with the emphasis on open source protocol definitions and rapid deployment operations with ad-hoc networking capability for remote sensing and data distribution.

The main Makrolab project is now in two different development technological stages, one consisting of the extreme temperature and climate conditions research development and the other consisting of a social and renewable energy modular setup for temperate climates. Subprojects include unmanned areal sea and ground vehicle development for sensor deployment, sensor and network centric paradigm research. The ISEA 2004 Makrolab-UNTP consists of a communications and information node in the Kiasma museum, presenting the specifics of the project’s past and future plans, with the emphasis on the unmanned aerial vehicle operations (TRUST-SYSTEM 77, S-77CCR) and tactical communications and of setting up a base of operations on the Tammakari island in the Helsinki archipelago using the new MAKROLAB-RDU (rapid deployment unit), an instant architecture rapid deployment building, developed for tactical media setups, that need high turnaround times, rapid deployment and quick disengagement. A new radar unit for sea/air monitoring and locating is used and locative media research pertaining to satellite navigation and radar integration (GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO) is planned using the RDU in the days from August 19-30. Data streams and work reports are sent directly to the communications and information node in the museum and online.

A policy document pertaining to sat-nay and locative media usage will be issued upon the completion of the project, part of the tactical media workshop ‘TCM PROGRESS — SOURCING THE INPUTS / MAPPING THE OUTPUTS’ which will be the main operation framework for the Lab in these days.

WiFi ArtCache is a mobile 802.11 WiFi node that provides an access point for curated, location-specific digital art. The machine exists independently of the public wired internet, but allows anyone within radio range to connect to it via the WiFi card on their laptop, PDA or any device that can use 802.11. Once connected, users are able to browse digital art objects, download them, or interact with them through the machine. What is particular about the digital art made available on the Art Cache machine is that it only exists while within radio range of the machines WiFi node. Once a user falls out of range of the machine – approximately 50 meters – the art objects dissipate. Weather travels; it has distances over which it has immediate effects, is anticipated, or presents unanticipated changes. The Art Cache machine behaves in a similar fashion. Mobility, travel, change, surprise and physical range of effect are all key concepts pertaining to the Art Cache machine. Like the weather, the digital art objects made available through machine rely on mobility and change as their expressive metaphors.

In Bird’s Nest Cafe, a large structure modelled after a bird’s nest and containing a sound environment is placed within a public space. This nest provides a sheltered site for sitting, talking, eating, and other communal activities.

The nest is constructed from many simple triangular modules, making it partly transparent. Instead of using modules to create an organized building the modules are used to make an organic, seemingly chaotic, structure, this construction allows it to create its own space but also allows the surrounding environment to be a part of the experience through the openings between the sticks. Integral to the nest is a sound environment which contains large amounts of detail, variation, and “natural rhythms” which are missing in modern buildings and urban existence.

The sound environment is created entirely from physical means [piano wire, motors, etc.), which, instead of using speakers, uses the physical structure of the nest itself as a resonant body (Like the sounding board in a piano). The motors are activated by a computer program which incorporates indeterminacy, 1/f noise, Brownian noise, and other patterns taken from nature. The sounds can be seen to function as a kind of architectural ornament which functions as an integral part of the structure in an analogous way to the architecture – creating its own sonic space but at the same time allowing the surrounding environment to be a part of the experience. Tables and chairs from the nearby cafe are placed inside the nest for visitors to enjoy.

During Séance, the e.motions relaying between a local event and remote players will be made audible using the traditional Ouija Board, which was also known as a Message Board. Bring your own laptop to participate in the event. In the 19th century Etienne-Jules Marey, Henri Bergson and Marie Curie met to investigate “the manifestations of yet undefined forces” through scientific investigations. These investigations attempted to measure the radioactivity and electric discharge of hysterics; to study telepathy and levitation; and to hold Seaces.

Séance, following these earlier experiments, is based on the popular parlour game from the 19th century. The original Ouija Board was also known as the ‘Talking Board’ or the ‘Message Board’, and was used to seek answers from the spirit world. The modern equivalent of this ‘searching for answers’ could be imagined to be Google – or any search engine for that matter. Are there ‘unknown forces’ still at play? What happens when answers depend on a network of movement? In this networked performance multiple players ask questions of the Board and their combined mouse movements, playing in real time, generate a cacophony of alphabetical answers. The result is a sort of networked glossalalia – an audio representation of the perpetual e.motion in the network.

The audiovisual spectacle Live Robot Love! interrogates themes concerning the current political climate and the coalescence of art, technology and the “future”. It weaves a loose narrative from found sound/video elements, global mass media (television broadcast, cartoons, news casts) and animation.

The performance’s theme centres around the fact that strategies of empire building – in particular the ‘American Century’ – are being played out in the arena of popular culture and global mass media. Simultaneously, the world is experiencing tectonic economic shifts (global trade agreements. Live Robot Love! draws sounds and images from a range of media including television (local live newscasts, cartoons, sci-fi, political debates), print (business pages, classifieds) and the internet (porn sites, online auctions) to create a montage of collisions, in order to generate discussion, and, we hope, to contribute to the various dialogues around politics, live art, and the future.

DJ/Composer Chris Hart’s densely layered narrative soundscape based on internet blogs, 1960’s lounge music, jazz, and other sources provides a tapestry of appropriated online personae and sampled sounds, through which an exploration of concepts of identity, love, technology, and contemporary politics emerges. VJ’s Michael Galbincea and Art Jones will then visually interpret this material via a collision of live video manipulations combining original motion graphics and 3D animation with sampled visual elements.

Crossing over the boundaries between fine art culture and pop culture, DJ and electronic composer Chris Hart together with video mixmasters Art Jones and Micheal Galbincea seek to create a space within the performance where fact and media irreverence mesh into one reality.

VJ Anyone delivers a special pre-launch version of The Suspension of Displeasure, a 60-minute video projection concept focused on hedonism. The Suspension of Displeasure aims to provide an environment free of pain and alienation, from calm and soothing visual patterns to beat shifting color fields and complex figurative layers.

In addition, live cameras will provide additional video sources, filming specific areas of the room, where members of the audience can step in a spotlight and be seen onscreen, this way engaging in a visual dialogue with the visuals, or simply indulging in narcissistic delight, looking at their larger than life image evolving amongst the video projections.

What’s your personal efficiency strategy? Can electromagnetic fields actually enhance your time management skills? Why was the ButterMate invented? Pan-o-matic will provide an overview of their philosophy and history, their operation as a research enterprise, and how to harness creative energy through strategic personal efficiency device.

Pan-o-matic is a cooperative centre for the research and development of PEDS Personal Efficiency Devices. We believe that it is possible to actually create effective, sustainable, user-friendly, non-discriminatory personal devices that can enhance any lifestyle choice regardless of race, creed, national origin and economic feasibility. Our facility near Niagara Falls, serves as our main hub, providing the resources for a diverse group of cultural workers to converge and explore the latest developments in 40 wireless communications, geospatial data macs, autonomous agents, nanobioscience, support teleconferencing and active neural linguistic networks. Team members rotate on a project basis and have included designers, gardeners, urban ethnologists, physicists, experimental egeographers, holistic practitioners and dowsers.

At ISEA2004, Stephanie Rothenberg, Director of Marketing for Pan-o-matic, will unveil the prototype for a new personal efficiency device soon to be released to retailers worldwide. The device merges a formerly overlooked ancient practice with state of the art technology to provide the consumer with entirety new levels of functionality and convenience. Leveraging the body’s own electromagnetic fields. the device offers a truly wireless experience and has become the world’s first portable, self-powered device.

The lowest common denominator of the entire EGOBOO.bits production is the GNU General Public Licence, also known as copyleft. Copyleft implies that all intellectual products (software, music, lyrics, ideas) published under the GNU General Public Licence have a common licence. Music, video, text or graphic design published under these terms on the EGOBOO.bits label can be freely distributed, used and modified by others as long as their derivatives remain under the same conditions.

EGOBOO.bits brings together some of the most appreciated electronic music artists in Croatia. The music production is operated by the participating members and CDs are usually designed, burned and distributed by the artists themselves. CDs can also be downloaded from the EGOBOO.bits website, bartered or obtained directly at a minimum production price. Video production is also carried out by the members, and video clips are free to use and modify. The EGOBOO.bits collective hold various music, video and creative writing workshops and also promote open-source culture through lectures and live performances in Croatia, the Balkans and Europe.

Sankari Show is a participatory video show about Elias. Elias is quite a nice guy, but he is not able to speak – so he is a little bit helpless on his own. Actually, Elias does speak, but it is the audience that gives Elias their own voice. That is the genius of the show – what they say defines his future.

Sankari is an improvisation show offering people a fun way to perform in front of an audience. It is a combination of karaoke, drama and video game. “Sankari” is the Finnish word for a hero. It also means the main character in a story The format of Sankari is based on interactive scenes where the participant improvises with virtual characters. The scenes consist of small video fragments. We listen to the improvisation and choose how other characters react by showing different video clips, The story can develop in many directions depending on the performance.

Elias works in a bar, but he wants to get famous. He dreams of a career as a talk show host, and of the beautiful rock star, Laura. Tonight Laura and big TV-producer Anders are coming to meet Elias. For Elias this means a date and a job interview at the same time.

Can you help Elias in his tricky situation? Whether Elias succeeds or fails depends on what you say. If you screw up it doesn’t matter because it is Elias who screws up. And in any case the audience has a great time – whatever happens, Sankari makes you a great entertainer. Sankari is created by Petri Kola and Minna Nurminen and hosted by Zarkus Poussa. Zarkus has his highly danceable gig after Sankari, so the positive vibes continue.

ISEA2004 presents a collaboration between ambientTV.NET and kondition pluriel. London-based ambientTV.NET is a crucible for independent, interdisciplinary practice.

Artistic directors Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel develop social and technical infrastructures and promote network architectures that facilitate alternatives to current socio-political and economic formations. Techniques and effects of data transmission provide a theme, medium, and performative space for projects spanning installation, documentary, dance, gastronomy, and real-time sound and video composition.

Montreal-based kondition pluriel was formed by dancer-choreographer Marie-Claude Poulin and media artist Martin Kusch. They produce performative spaces that integrate media and choreography, and are recognized for their work in the fields of contemporary dance, performative installations and responsive environments. Their practice is geared toward the transformation of the real and the investigation of the relationships between time, memory, body and space.

ambientTV.NET is a crucible for independent, interdisciplinary practice ranging from installation and performance, through documentary, dance, and gastronomy, to sound and video composition and real-time manipulation. We continue to develop social and technical infrastructure and promote network architectures that facilitate alternatives to current socio-political and economic formations.

Karaoke’s frequent habitat is the bar; its participants are stars; its technology is glamorous; and its message is personal glory. Contraband, Stowaway Lounge transforms this amateur medium to explore issues of national identity, local cultures, Hollywood media clichés and the relationship between imagery, text and live performance.
Contraband, Stowaway Lounge invites the audience to step on stage. In a club environment, participants can select from a jukebox of artist-made karaoke videos from around the world and sing-along with video projection. The videos for Contraband,Stowaway Lounge reinvent the pop-cultural medium of karaoke. From Tokyo to Tallinn, the ubiquitous, democratic form of entertainment activates national identity, nostalgia, sentimentality, and glimmers of rock-stardom. Individual performances transform this generic format with ironic, camp, critical and individualized meanings.

Erupting within the entertainment-industrial complex, these do-it-yourself appropriations recode the corporate into the personal. In a world that is determined by processes of globalization, the translation of cultural forms such as Karaoke allows for the radical localization of the global spectacle. From ABBA to Johnny Cash, we are expecting a diverse range of interpretations of pop standards and artists’ favourites. Hosts Christina Ulke and Rachel Mayeri will pass the mic to you; the special MC of the evening is sparkle a.k.a. Marc Herbst.

Savibraator is a co-operative project between ceramists and musicians initiated by Urmas Puhkan and Lauri Kilusk.

Savibraator consists of spectacular audiovisual improvisation where music becomes visualized in clay, which in return forms different rhythms.

The attractiveness of throwing clay appears mainly in the small details and transformations brought about by the turning of the wheel. In Savibraator, these details are amplified through video projection, and transformed through musical interpretation.

The ceramists throw clay onto the wheel. The process is filmed and projected onto the wall. The images of the clay being worked provide improvisational inspiration to the musicians, and in return the music they play also inspires the ceramists, creating a circular system of collaboration.

The result of clay throwing in this instance is not a traditional_ pot, but a collaborative experience of creation between the guest musicians and ceramists.

Synaesthetically coupled sights and sounds add new time and space dimensions. Pauline Oliveros a-mazes with delays and sound geometries. Diana Slattery spirals tunnels of light, drawn by the glyphs of the visual Language, Glide. Stephen Moore voices an oracular text, surfing the waveforms in live interpretation.

Many mazes were explored to create this performance. First: the communication and control mazes the systems aspect) of any collaboration weaving three artistic visions together into a coherent, aesthetically satisfying piece are challenge enough.

Second: the technical maze-space of bringing two complex algorithmic performance systems, one aural, one visual, together in a meaningful manner, when each has a phase space of exponential depth and variety, is navigated through a third program, the ‘Intertwingulator’, linking and allowing flexible mapping-coupling and decoupling-among multiple parameters in each system.

Third: the structure of the performance. The title, Listening Deeply in A Maze, references Pauline Oliveros’ lifetime practice of deep listening. In her words, “Deep listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep listening is my life practice”. Both Slattery and Moore have been her students in deep listening; the current work is inspired and informed by this practice.

sein & zeit is a performance piece that features the recital of a percussionist: on stage. It both breaks down and controls television broadcasts.

The physical movement of the player is merely a recital for his own benefit, however to the machines it is an operation. In this regard the linear musical score dictates the music, but at the same time represents instructions for the machines. Once the player becomes familiar with his dual role, he begins to improvise. In other words, he becomes the operator of the system.

This round table will retrace the evolution of women’s practice in copy art. Organized by CRITIQ in conjunction with the exhibition What Happened to the Pioneers?

SkoltZ-Kolgen is a plurimedia work based in Montreal, comprising Dominique T. Skoltz and Herman W. Kolgen. Rigorous and raucous creators, their artistic pursuits plump the integral linkages between sound and image. Liberated by digital media they simultaneously assume numerous positions, inhabiting a space between film, photography, audio art, and installation. Architects of worlds, SkoltZ_Kolgen penetrates the ephemeral skin between solid matter and the unsubstantiated, the intimate and the objective, their work conjures bewitched worlds that gestate betwixt accident and intent.

This is a performance installation in an interactive biomechanic process. Its components are placed in various variable time-spaces. It is rather hard to define by looking at the devices used: a sculpture of electromagnetic waves, punctual changes to the installation without previous notice, constantly changing formulated photos (through an http site on the Internet), pirated broadcasts, bodies acting like transmission antennaes, telepresence on the street… Bring your portable radio to catch the pirates or any electromagnetic weaver!

Produced with Neil Wiernik (Toronto) and performing collaborators Jocelyn Robert (Quebec City) and Tetsuo Kogawa (from Japan via the ISEA95 Internet site) and other guests.

Communion is a multidisciplinary work which attempts to delimit the relationship between real and synthetic bodies, a kinaesthesia originating inside the natural body which is assembled electrically through electronic flesh and skin.

Collaboration: Corps Indice, Agora de la danse, O’Vertigo, ICARI, PRIM, Conseil des arts & des lettres du Quebec — secteur Arts multidisciplinaires et multimedias.

Acknowledgments: Katherine Beaudoin, Alexandre Burton, Fernando Collazo, Marc Deserrano, Daniel Ethier, Richard Gravel, Marc Leclair, Richard Lorrain, Axel Morgenthaler, Eric Portelance, Maryse Poulin, Marie Tebbs.

MUTEK in collaboration with ISEA2004: Canadian Electronic Music at the Baltic Sea

On the ISEA2004 cruise (August 15th-17th) on the Silja Opera ferry Akufen, Deadbeat, Dr P®axil, DJ Neurom perform sounds that have not sailed the Baltic waters before. The MUTEK/ISEA2004 collaboration begins at the Koneisto festival on August 14th, with live performances by MUTEK artists Crackhaus and Akufen. On August 19th the in the TALLINN ISEA2004 CLUB MUTEK presents Fliiux, an audiovisual diptyche by Skoltz_Kolgen. The MUTEK line up in ISEA2004 is curated by canadian promoter Eric Mattson.

The history behind Nine2five recordings goes hand-in-hand with the development of underground breakbeat culture in Finland. Meeting Goose (Pasi Saarinen) at the legendary Helsinki nightclub Nylon, where he held a Saturday residence for a good two years, Dizzy (Juha Ponteva) and him soon found out they shared the same interest in music. Later hooking up with Nenis (Sami Nenola), the skater-turned-dj, they named themselves The Executives, in accordance with the labels profile and after a long history in underground music business, they finally set up Nine2five recordings in 2000. This information comes from yourears.com

The centre for women artists La Centrale is interested in the relationship between art & technology and in the questions surrounding new practices emerging from this marriage. La Centrale will present the works of two artists touching upon the senses in a technological context.

Concert

After doing years of underground work organizing big scale events as Stealth Unit and making all sorts of electronic music with different projects, Robin Grotenfelt and Mikko Mantila decided to start experimenting with new sounds and new forms of thinking. This experiment ended up being Hetikohta – a musical journey which flashes feelings from both the nightclub dance floor and the living room sofa. With influences from early break-beat, house, disco and dub they’re combining electronic music with traditional live instruments and vocals. The list of collaborating artists and performers is long : “You always hear these crazy sounds in your head while making a song, for example a sax solo or funny percussion from a 70’s drum machine, and then you start thinking who’d be the best person to do the job”, explains Mikko. The guys are working on a full LP release, but before that there’s an EP coming out on nine2five recordings, a well-recognized Finnish indie label. During the last couple of years Hetikohta has established their status as steady and uplifting live act. Their performances include a show at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Scandinavia, Asia Europe Art Camp in Indonesia and plenty of gigs around their country. Both Robin and Mikko are working on Bassoradio.com, the only true underground internet radio in Finland concentrating in bass-heavy music (now also on FM-frequency).

INTERFACING SOUND Performance

The approaches of the individual artists towards their Stones of the Sea are as widely varied, both technically and thematically, as their backgrounds. The techniques range from software art and 3D-algorithms to animation, documentary cinema and photography from cunning custom software solutions to good old low-tech devices. Their thematic viewpoints vary from explorations of deeply personal, emotional relationships to sociological, almost scientific approaches. Some of the stories are abstract, some are expressive, some narrative and from some stories you might even learn something.

Based around the musical sets performed by the Finnish musicians of the nine2five label on Sunday, and the selection of Swedish musicians from Fylkningen on Monday, the Amfibio-artists will remix and partially create in real-time this cinematic experiment. As the end-result a number of visual stories will merge into something between an episodic movie and an audiovisual concert in two long VJ performances based on a combination of careful planning, playful improvisation and pure luck.

Amfibio founded in 2002 is Helsinki-based collective of artists with wide variety of backgrounds ranging from media art to cinema and from engineering to graphic design. They collaborate with sound artists, dancers and theatre groups to create visual media performances. Amfibio founded in 2002 is Helsinki-based collective of artists with wide variety of backgrounds ranging from media art to cinema and from engineering to graphic design. They collaborate with sound artists, dancers and theatre groups to create visual media performances.

Concert

The Executives (of nine2five recordings) gave concerts with visuals by Amfibio.

The history behind nine2five recordings goes hand-in-hand with the development of underground breakbeat culture in Finland. Meeting Goose (Pasi Saarinen) at the legendary Helsinki nightclub Nylon, where he held a Saturday residence for a good two years, Dizzy (Juha Ponteva) and him soon found out they shared the same interest in music. Later hooking up with Nenis (Sami Nenola), the skater-turned-dj, they named themselves The Executives, in accordance with the labels profile and after a long history in underground music business, they finally set up nine2five recordings in 2000.

The six members of Amfibio Antti Ahonen, Maippi Ketola, Teemu Kivikangas, Mika Meskanen, Antti Silvast and Pauli Ojala have gathered around a common main theme: their personal relationships to the sea. Each member of the group explores this subject from their own viewpoints to produce a collection of visual stories.

The approaches of the individual artists towards their Stories of the Sea are as widely varied, both technically and thematically, as their backgrounds. The techniques range from software art and 3D-algorithms to animation, documentary cinema and photography from cunning custom software solutions to good old low-tech devices. Their thematic viewpoints vary from explorations of deeply personal, emotional relationships to sociological, almost scientific approaches. Some of the stories are abstract, some are expressive, some narrative and from some stories you might even learn something. Based around the musical sets performed by the Finnish musicians of the nine2five label on Sunday, and the selection of Swedish musicians from Fylkningen on Monday, the Amfibio-artists will remix and partially create in real-time this cinematic experiment. As the end-result a number of visual stories will merge into something between an episodic movie and an audiovisual concert in two long VJ performances based on a combination of careful planning, playful improvisation and pure luck.

Curator:

• Jacques Charbonneau

Participants:

• Philippe Boissonnet (Canada)
• Daniel Cabanis (France)
• Jacques Charbonneau (Canada)
• Ginette Daigneault (Canada)
• Carol Dallaire (Canada)
• James Durand (France)
• Hubert Durocher (Canada)
• Jean-Pierre Gagnon (Canada)
• Richard Garneau (Canada)
• Gregory P. Garvey (Canada)
• Daniel Hogue (Canada)
• Alex Kempkens (Canada)
• Sowon Kwon (USA)
• Pierre Monat (Canada)
• Robert Mongeau (Canada)
• Georg Muhleck (Germany)
• Andre Pappathomas (Canada)
• Sylvie Pronovost (Canada)
• Jacques Rancourt (Canada)
• Barbara Rauch (Czech Republic)
• Cynthia Beth Rubin (USA)
• Richard Ste-Marie (Canada)
• J.W. Stewart (Canada)
• Anton Vidokle (USA)

This interactive media dance performance is the result of a year long collaboration between the Institute for Studies in the Arts (ISA) of Arizona State University and Montreal-based Montanaro Dance. The work features the Video Sensing System that has been developed by John T. Mitchell and Robb Lovell, two artist-technologists associated with the ISA.

Organized by Centre Copie-Art—Galerie arts technologiques, this exhibition will present in parallel, for each artist included, a copigraphy (copy art) produced at the beginning of their career and a work representative of their present output.

Curators:

• Monique Brunet Weinmann
• Jacques Charbonneau

Participants:

• M. Amal Abdenour (France)
• Barbara Astman (USA)
• Dina Dar (USA)
• Marisa Gonzalez (Spain)
• Sarah Jackson (Canada)
• Doreen Lindsay (Canada)
• Joan Lyons (USA)
• Lieve Prins (Belgium/Netherlands)
• Sonia Landy Sheridan (USA)
• Nell Tenhaaf (Canada)

Presented in connection with the exhibition Changing Configurations, this day of interaction and exchange will offer an opportunity to examine some of the aspects of the immediate problems confronting the image and its relationship with technology and art. Various guests will debate this problem with artists participating in the exhibition and the public concerned by the contemporary question of the image. Organized by Vox Populi as part of the event le Mois de la Photo. Followed by the opening of the exhibition Changing Configurations.

Participants:

• Daniel Canogar (Spain)
• Marie Carani (Canada)
• Carol Dallaire (Canada)
• Timothy Druckery (USA)
• Alain Renaud (France)
• Dr. Hubertus Von Amelunxen (Germany)

In an era which certain people qualify as “post-photographic”, the exhibition Changing Configurations questions the increasingly narrow connections that unite images and technology. This exhibit is produced by Vox Populi during the event Le Mois de la Photo.

Curator:

• Richard Baillargeon

Participants (Maison de la culture Mercier):

• Marc Audette (Canada)
• Carol Dallaire (Canada)
• Caroll Moppet (Canada)
• Sophie Bellissent (Canada)
• Joan Fontcuberta (Spain)
• Daniel Canogar (Spain)
• Celine Messier (Canada)

Participants (Vox Populi):

• Dominique Pelletey (France)
• Ramona Ramlochand (Canada)

Concept
Historically the thought is following the development of the instrumental theater by Mauricio Kagel & Karlheinz Stockhausen for a mutual apply in multimedia arts. Here is the attempt of combination of instrumental theater with electroacoustic music in an improvised interactive audiovisual structure. The idea of >work in progress< dedicates to an >interdisciplinary and cross-cultural communication<, as ISEA2002 committed to. In the sense of interdisciplinary progress this work offer an open form for all arts to have reciprocated experiences. The stage aspect associates with the Chinese shadow-puppet-show (PIE) and running-figure-lantern for approaching a mind of crossculture exchange.

Functions of the work
Technically this work detects audio by a number of microphones, which are carded by the musicians and dancers. It then makes a choice of pictures accordingly to the sound and transforms those. Also the sound will be transformed in stereo of 6 channel by granular synthesis and will fit it in a prepared electroacoustic composition and stage arrangement. The audiovisual ambience and the interpreters are open to the public. The performance is expected, but undetermined. The public can participate in this performance by going and coming through the orbit stage like the moving figures in the Chinese running figure- lantern. For the performance of this piece in ISEA2002 Nagoya two musicians and two dancer (1x male, 1x female) with good (vocal-) improvisation will interpret this piece.

With support of City of Graz , province of Upper Austria, Thundeskanzleramt Kunst, Nagoya City University, Bruckner-Conservatory Linz, University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz, the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs Austria.

NeverEndingStories is structured as a looped animation leading us deeper and deeper in the euphoria of communication. The animation begins with a Mickey Mouse head whose ears alternately can be changed (by pressing the computer keys) from spheres to globes, hearts, money signs, atom cells, record players and yin yang symbols. Culled from an encyclopedic array of globally recognizable symbols NeverEndingStories continues by displaying a world map on which rain a shower of angels, bombs, guns, ears, candy, eagles, shopping carts, clocks, machine wheels, bugs, ringing telephones, ticking clocks, waggling fingers, pigs, skulls with heart shaped eyes, analysis charts and more. The work allows for both directional and optional interaction, making it a dynamic tool comparable to a software application. The keyboard-driven trajectory allows one to replace scenes and choose one fragment after another, resulting in a linear deployment of interlinked events that develop semantic connections as well. The interactive keyboard provides for a choice of ingredients, an extensive vocabulary from which it is possible to produce many combinations. Consulting the work resembles “mixing”, the computer becoming a kind of musical instrument or assembly device, putting the visitor in the position of a “processor, ” the operator of a machine.

The performance by these two Brazilian creators incorporates different features including video, poetry and music, played live by the authors. The title Pincelulas derives from a combination of Portuguese words which convey the fundamental messages in this work: pincel (brush), the painting instrument; cellula (cell), the basic unit of all Living species and pincelada (stroke), the painters manifestation. The performance’s objective is to tell the story of human development, from its physical inception to its emotional constitution, attempting to address each of the three stages of life: embryo, formation, birth and growth; intellect and senility. Eder Santos has become a respected personality as a producer and video artist in the Brazilian and international communities. Since 1989, he has been presented in various festivals and museums in Brazil, Europe and the United States. Eder Santos produces commercial work and videoclips with famous Brazilian musicians on a regular basis. Paulo Sergio dos Santos, by the other hand, also born in Belo Horizonte, bring his vast experience as a musician to their cooperative work: he was a percussionist with the Minas Gerais Simphony Orchestra for nine years and has been part of the well-known UAKTI musical group since its inception 19 years ago. With a series of concerts throughout these years, UAKTI has been acclaimed and admired by an eclectic public in the United States, Canada, Japan and most of Europe. He has been the constant composer of music and soundtrack for Mer Santos videos and installations.

Brazilian videomaker Eder Santos creates vibrant, poetic works that merge the personal, the cultural and the technological to reinterpret motifs that are central to Brazil’s African, indigenous and European heritage. Evoking the rhythms and textures of memory and history, he crafts a visual language of high-end and low-end technologies, from digital media to Super-8 film. As a Brazilian artist, Santos is acutely aware of the socioeconomic relation of technological media and cultural representation: “I have never lost sight of the fact that I am using a technology rather foreign to my city and country – in short, there is a gap in the relation between the social and the technological. As a consequence, I always attempt to use our own cultural elements.” In the vivid UAKTI-Bolero (1987). Santos’ electronic rendering of a musical performance, Ravel’s Bolero has been interpreted in terms of a Brazilian sensibility. Rite & Expression (1988) is a televisual reconstruction of 17th-century Baroque architecture, religious syncretism and African cultural rituals. Europe in Five Minutes (1986) and I Cannot Go to Africa Because I Am on Duty (1990) address the use of technological media as modes of cultural “documentation”. States Santos, “I use technology to express visual and tactile sensations, moods and feelings. I aim at creating a private world that is both an inner and an outer reality.”

The first performance of “VirtualAERI” was given in 1997 at IRCAM’s Espace de Projection, in Paris, France. The second version “VirtualAERI II”. was written in 1998. It consisted of four sections, each of which dealt with a different kind of space, large, medium and small. The form is intentionally simplified, like the succession of “block type” sections. The static sections anticipate with the kinetic sections always following. These are abruptly alternated in this piece. This idea of form was originally experimented with in a previous composition. In this composition it is evolved to further possibilities. The mechanical textures are superimposed one onto another. At the same the this creates poly tempo. In each section the texture starts in one shape then gradually transforms into another. Not only in the sections, but also within the whole piece, the overall phase gradually transforms and intensifies. Virtual instruments, or controllers, cannot produce sounds by themselves. They merely send signals that produce sounds by means of a computer or a sound module. They may be regarded as an interface between the performer and the computer insofar as they translate the energy derived from body movements into electrical signals. At the same time however, they allow the performer to express complex musical ideas. With the help of a controller, a tiny gesture can trigger any number of complex musical passages at one and the same time in a real time context, whereas a traditional instrument can produce only a limited range of sounds.

Get your eyeball tattooed!

A black & white world bound together by immersive imagery set in a radical minimal soundscape. The empty white screen reveals itself to be just another layer among endless projected inscriptions onto the eye. Cell’s mesmerizing visual projections are created by C.V.A: a real time rendering graphics engine prototype. For 66b, the idea of test patches has lead to a live movement film strip where myriad afterimages highlight the relationship between performer and ground in an ever-shifting dynamic. 66b/cell, together with Tachi – Maeda Laboratory Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, are developing wearable devices synchronizing body gesture to the visual and sound network. All and nothing. Black and white. Elusive and permanent. Indelibly stamped.

The relationship between space and body within a media-oriented society interests me greatly, and as the theme for this piece I have chosen “Ambiguous Senses/ Misleading feelings” as relates to the legs and body, using legs and images of legs to express this theme. While I am an artist, or in other words, a person who sees and draws, I am also a performer, or an actor. My perceptions of “sections” of the body, and how I perceive the relationship of the “moving body” to the “body as a stationary Image”, is an extremely important question. In art history, body parts, or selected body members, have often been used for “artistic exercises”. Sketching part of the body, such as the head, hands or legs, is seen as a natural step when starting a piece of art or even a simple study for a piece of art. As a viewer/drawer it is possible to see only part of the body, and that section can be isolated in any manner. However, the performer can only focus his attention on part of his body, and can only put importance on a specific member. He cannot actually cut out and isolate that part. While the actor can concentrate on a certain body part, he cannot connect that part with 1 other parts. The part is an indivisible called a body, and when one end trembles, the vibration is conveyed to the other end at a distance. How should the artist/performer interact with this matter called a body to which he is unwillingly connected? In the actual performance, I use real legs and images of photographed legs. These movements are random; they do not carry a special message, nor do they try to express anything. However, the image of the actual legs and images moving near and far cause confusion; the viewer falls into a state of confusion and experiences “ambiguous and misleading sensations”. The act of walking does not have any particular story to it, however, it might appear that this performance is trying to express something. One reason for this is that the cut legs belong to an actual body, and are always connected to a body. The actual legs and projected legs are seen in an “misleading sense”, that is, as somehow connected to a body.

Microtonal sound installation for multiple mobile sound sources,  performed by Singaporean community artists as part of the IDMI’s New Music and the Networked Ensemble Project.

Pocket Gamelan – Mandala 7 is a microtonal sound installation for mobile devices in which sound projection relies entirely on hand-held battery-operated amplifiers of sixteen Nokia mobile phones. The work does not depend on mains amplification, fixed speaker placement or tethered performance interfaces but explores the collaborative potential of mobile phones used as moving sound sources and as hand-held remote control units. Sound interaction involves chorusing, a by-product of the movement of each sound source and microtonal tuning algorithms which are programmed into each handset and activated by commands initiated by the players.

Pocket Gamelan – Mandala 7 uses a tuning configuration that resembles a mandala. Its geometry defines a reflective listening space in which each of the players interact with one another as they explore a 35-note microtonal scale developed by contemporary tuning theorist Erv Wilson. This scale contains many harmonic intervals described by music theorists from antiquity and still found in musical traditions from various parts of the world.

Pocket Gamelan – Mandala 7 uses a j2me network framework developed at the University of Wollonging by composer A/Prof Greg Schiemer assisted by Mark Havryliv.

Different cultures have special rules and common elements that humans identify as behavior or grammar. We developed a computer model to illustrate this. We also developed Hitch Haiku, a system to express and to interactively experience cultural understanding using cultural computing. ZENetic applies some aspects of Buddhist philosophy as a model in computational science. Our motivation derives from the more than 2,000 years of innovative Buddhist tradition. Methods of interaction between Zen master and pupil, developed to sharpen the understanding of human consciousness, provide a rich base for interactive modeling — a field still unexplored in the Western scientific tradition. Hitch Haiku system interactively aids users in creating haiku, poems with imagery-maximizing mechanisms, the shortest in the world. First, “kire-ji”, words that indicate a transition in the poem, and particles are added to the word/phrase input by the user to make a five- or seven-syllable phrase. Second, phrases including terminology related to the user’s input are located in a phrase database holding examples of haiku from the Japanese literary four-season calendar, ensuring the cultural validity of the haiku. These phrases are then “hitched” together to generate a haiku. Although this system periodically generates flawed haiku, the ability to generate haiku that support the expansion of users’ cultural understanding has been confirmed through assessment experimentation. The i.plot system discovers the hidden connections between words. It determines that a connection between words exists if two words are found in the same thought-form or make up a stimulus-response pair in the Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus. Then it finds several connections between the two words by tracing a large set of possible paths between them, so that the paths traverse several two-word connections. If the chaos engine is in an appropriate state, a preference may be added so that longer paths are displayed, or so that the paths are forced to connect through a more distantly connected word. The user may further expand the connections of any word of interest.

Crosscurrents: New Media Art is the collective title of a three-part exhibition of new media art that together comprise a cross cultural discourse on art, sound, image and object that is being presented by the Osage Art Foundation and the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute at Osage Singapore in association with the Singapore Arts Festival.

Crosscurrents includes work drawn from the exhibitions Sharing Memory by Beijing-based artists Qiu Zhijie and Jin Jiangbo, Ambient Art by Hong Kong artist Kingsley Ng and Dancing with Frequencies — a new site specific work by Singaporean artist Zulkifle Mahmod.

This exhibition of new media art from Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore is a form of international cultural exchange that helps to focus attention on the importance of regional and cultural uniqueness.

Resembling an early black & white film still, this unique picture comes to life but refuses to disclose the plot.

Visitors peer into a Magic Faraway Tree to get a glimpse into a fairytale forest in which a virtual bear pays homage to pioneer video artist Bruce Nauman.

Offering omnipotence through a touch screen, Charmed invites visitors to tinker with the lives of animated people in a tabletop city.

ZiZi is an affectionate ottoman couch that asks for emotional support while offering physical comfort.

A treat for the senses Immersion lets visitors play with sea creatures in a virtual underwater world.

Etherradio Live: Experimental music from Aotearoa new Zealand
Performance by Adam Willetts and PSN Electronic (Peter Stapleton, Su Ballard & Nathan Thompson)

Sound artists Bruce Russell, Adam Willetts, and PSN Electronic (Peter Stapleton, Su Ballard, and Nathan Thompson) use old and new radio technologies in ways that reveal both the richness of radio as a material of media art, and the density of New Zealand’s unseen radio environment. These three works were recorded in the South Island in June and July 2008. Through the interaction of radio waves, atmosphere, and topography they are infused with the winter storms of the Southern Pacific, the volcanic hills and harbours of Port Lyttelton, Port Chalmers and the reclaimed swampland around Christchurch’s Avon River.

Bruce Russell: Electro-magnetic Feedback Study #1 (Strange House in the Snow). Recorded in Lyttelton during a snowstorm, this piece was created with the audio produced by an electromagnetic feedback loop produced by a roughly wound coil of galvanised steel wire, connected to a Tivoli Model 1 radio through the external aerial socket. An audio line out was taken from the Tivoli to the #1 and #2 inputs of Bruce’s vintage Concord Contessa guitar amplifier. The coil was then placed around the speaker magnet in the rear of the amplifier. The radio was tuned to the so-called ‘X-band’, the frequencies above the AM broadcast radio band in New Zealand, used for radio-location and navigation.

PSN Electronic: Teleporter 1 (recording)

Electronic samples, Korg and shortwave radio.

In the Teleporter series of works PSN Electronic explore the landscape of electricity and broadcast, constructing new sound environments by reconfiguring afterimages of recordings and transmissions. The works are inspired by the Voyager discoveries on Mars, by remote core samples and images dissolved into thin strands of data transmitted back to Earth, information delayed and filtered through transmission and reception. From the less distant locale of Port Chalmers, PSN Electronic engage a process of dissolution and reconstruction, weaving radio transmissions and field recordings into a new kind of landscape. Teleporter 1 explores unknown environments that melt on examination.

Adam Willetts: Electrosmog Lightning Ride

Electrosmog Lightning Ride is an improvised sound work created using walkie-talkies, Wii Remotes and an electrosmog detector to produce complex patterns of gesturally-controlled radio interference, feedback, and live sampling. This tactile and physical approach to electronic improvisation incorporates the wireless space and electrosmog of these instruments as both method of control and as audible output. Adam emphasises the presence and position of the body, locating it in electromagnetic space and revelling in the magic of the ether.

Current work of the et al. collective is best summarised as a kind of archiving of societal events and issues, aspects of which are explored through immersive installation environments that engage with issues of global political inter- (or hyper-) activity, fundamentalisms, and belief systems. The collective’s practice evokes the closed and secretive dimensions of global communication, information, and transport networks, and to this end the social meaning of things deploys tools such as synthesised speech, political sound bites and aleatoric scripting, reconstructed Google Earth visuals and advertising hoardings and noticeboards. et al.’s scenario both informs and excludes the viewer.  the social meaning of things is embedded in the political flows that create, maintain, and permeate nations and borders.

Kentaro Yamada’s Listening Heads highlights the nuances of communication made from the non-linguistic elements that shape conversation. Speaking into one of the microphones hanging in front of these large-scale video portraits provokes an emotive but silent expression from the sitters – they frown, fall asleep, look bored, or intent. The viewer engages in a phantasmic conversation, seeking by habit an approving or appropriate look from faces that appear open and responsive but simply form a thin veneer over a computer interface. The resulting monologue can feel reassuringly complete, an illusion of interaction framed by intangible presence. Sometimes the spoken input and the video response coincide, but other times the head’s reply leaves the viewer with the sense of a communication breakdown. Listening Heads plays with our human perception of the face as privileged object. The illusion that the heads listen and respond turns the portraits into a kind of mirror, returning our gaze. By clothing his hardware and software in his friends’ visages Yamada constructs a kind of wordless Turing test.

Alex Monteith’s Composition for farmer… tweaks an archetype of agrarian New Zealand, so often described as a nation of 40 million sheep and 4 million people. In the crisp air of a Taranaki farm, Lloyd Bishop, a champion New Zealand dog triallist, expertly choreographs three dogs and 120 sheep across the viewfinders of Monteith’s four simultaneously recording video cameras.  The once-primetime television staple of sheepdog trialling, where farmers and their dogs compete to usher a mob of sheep through a course and into a pen in record time, becomes in Monteith’s video installation a pattern of animal and human bodies. There is nostalgia for an imagined rustic innocence, contradicted by the muddy specificity and the fantastic pointlessness of this choreography. Formally, the work draws a relationship between the rigid framing of the camera lens and the pegged arenas the sheep move between.  This work evokes nationalist, multi-screen hymns like This is New Zealand, a celebration of culture and landscape that screened at the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka.

Stella Brennan’s South Pacific made in collaboration with radiologist Dr David Perry, examines the links between sonar, radar and ultrasound; technologies for making images from non-visual sources. Playing with relations between the visual, aural and textual, the work explores how the Second World War changed the perception of oceanic space and the conflict’s legacy in the region. In 1954 American radiologist D. Howry and his team created live ultrasound images using declassified material from the gun turret of a B29 Superfortress – planes which, at the close of the Second World War would leave Pacific island airfields in their hundreds to bomb the Japanese mainland. Reviving a technique of this early experimental ultrasound, which required the patient to be immersed in water, Brennan forms images exploring the interface between war, technology and perception. South Pacific recalls stories of tropical lagoons littered with rusting ordnance and coral islands flattened for runway, a vast ocean is glimpsed by radar, video and ultrasound.

Granddaddy of New Zealand experimental media practice,  Len Lye (1901-1980) is known for his vivid and entrancing films – often made by directly scratching, painting and printing onto filmstock – and his kinetic sculptures that boom, flip and crash.  Free Radicals repurposes and reimagines film  through movement hand-scratched onto black film leader. Lightning-fashes, scribbles and stripes synchronise to drumming – a homage to Yoruba, god of thunder. The music was printed as an optical soundtrack, the waveforms of which then feed back into Lye’s animation. The film retains a sense of process, of Lye’s fascination with doodling and unconcious mark-making as a way to access deeply held, pre-rational understanding. Scratching the emulsion back to the clear film beneath, the drawn marks of the hand are clearly visible. Lye’s studied mix of accident and control sends scribbles rotating and stripes dancing across the frame. Forms pulse and twist in a kinesthetic meld of image and sound. Free Radicals suggests molecular interactions; the film’s black void could be interatomic or interstellar space.

Sam & Gigi have been solidly producing for over four years now. They have been recognised all over the world by some of the most famous djs and producers like Roger Sanchez, Kerri Chandler, Jori Hulkkonen, H-Foundation, Ian Pooley, Dave Clarke, Lottie, and many more. Sam & Gigi continue working not only together but also with other producers and groups in various projects. Sam & Gigi’s musical history goes back more than a decade, with influences in jazz, classical, disco, and techno. This mix gives their production a unique and influential sound. Creating soulful music that can capture the moment and arousing feelings is their passion and main priority. With Sam being one of Finland’s earliest underground warehouse event promoters since 1991, his love for electronic music has been deeply imbedded within his soul.

Sam began producing in late ’98. At the same time he met Gigi and as things started to find their place, they were in the studio together. Gigi’s background in classical music and jazz has given her excellent tools to produce house and techno not forgetting the feminine touch she gives to the production. In duo they seem to get something unique into their work which is impossible to achieve solo. They have been signing all of their tracks to high profile labels such as Ovum, Siesta, Drenched, Still, and Stickman’s sub-lable Aquarius. When Sam & Gigi perform live they are surprising in many ways. Their repertoire includes strong house and techno. They have an astonishing way to combine minimalist techno with smooth vocals. They can move people in their emotions as well as on the dance floor. Whenever you want to hear real quality live, this is the duo for you.

Three years ago street performer and new media artist Tim Bray from sunny Gold Coast, Australia, was in Helsinki with a broken heart and a broken pogo stick. He saw a cruise ship being built and had a dream of playing home keyboards on a ship leaving Helsinki. The dream has become reality.

CasioNova and his band AutoChord perform a history of 80’s home keyboards demonstrating the joy of electronic music making. The show utilizes reconfigured 80’s technologies such as home keyboards, a Commodore 64 and an Atari 2600, along with projections, physical theatre and comedy, and of course some incredible sounds and songs from “obsolete” equipment. In addition to the stage music performance CasioNova will also perform a street theatre piece using a solar sound system, and conduct an open workshop for a Casio orchestra.

INTERFACING SOUND

Yoshio Machida’s piece Infini: The Speed of Light was composed by processing the sound of the Steel Pan with the Max/MSP audio software.

The sound of the Steel Pan, which is performed by the artist, is often associated with “tight”. In Asia the instrument has long been a symbol of light, mainly because of its sub-division into differently tuned panels, which can be seen as similar to the construction of light from many different waves. In this piece, the sound of Steel Pan is processed and modulated by Max/MSP so that it becomes more ‘transparent’ than traditional sound. The sound will dance in the air freely, like light.

S.S.S proposes an experience where the main roles are played by sound, image and the intensity of bodies in movement. A three-sided conversation that modulates a sonic and luminous flux. Cecile Babiole: Ultrasounds; Laurent Dailleau: Theremin; Atau Tanaka: BioMuse.

S.S.S. create a sound/image environment centered around gesture. The performance features three artists onstage: two producing sound and the third manipulating image. These materials, light and sound, are articulated bymovements of the arms and body. Sensor systems are the instruments turning gesture into digital information.

Each performer has his instrument and occupies his part of the total media sphere: the Theremin, the first gestural electronic music instrument from 1919; the BioMuse, which captures muscle tension data or EMG signals; and ultrasound sensors which translate movements into flowing computer graphics. Together they create an ensemble whose product is a combination of interdependent parts. Image and music are composed together, taking on equal importance. This is not a soundtrack to a video or a VJ putting wallpaper to music — there is not one medium pasted on as an afterthought to the other. Nor is it a simple synaesthesia of one medium reflecting another.

Babiole, Dailleau and Tanaka are instrumentalists that interpret a unified compositional. concept — one in light and the other in sound. Corporeal gesture brings their worlds together creating a dramatic performative whole. Expressive gesture becomes the channel of interaction between the performers, technology, and media.

On this occasion, Syntfarm focuses on bringing you a glimpse of an alternative lifestyle. SYNTBOUTIQUE is a specialized showroom that collects recipes, methods, myths and platforms for sustainable lifestyles that we are not used to. In SYNTBOUTIQUE, you will be able to interact with fantastical allegories through videos and rapidly prototyped replicas of objects, tools and landscapes that are found and used by people who don’t have access to information technologies, electricity and mass media, and are still living in a mutually beneficial relationship with their surroundings. The historical, anthropological, functional, and aesthetical values of these found objects, along with their alive-ness and complexity, are reduced to a series of pure singular expressions. This occurs as they are fabricated into the raw synthetic forms of rapid prototypes. The singular structures and layers of the transformed artifacts can help us to see and get closer to experiencing the use of human-appropriated objects from nature.

One of the main aims of SYNTBOUTIQUE is to promote and encourage sustainable living. Syntfarm hopes to be able to initiate a lively dialogue between visitors to the showroom and the artifacts displayed. All the commodified objects from SYNTBOUTIQUE are fabricated with the best quality materials found on market today and are the first step in establishing consumers’ trust and support.

Water is an elemental force of life and destruction; it’s also a key component in the environmental transformation that the planet is now experiencing. It is the most powerful symbol of flow, purity and survival, and plays essential roles in our daily life as well as global geopolitics. The artwork is an interactive film installation which takes water as its subject matter, as well as its substance and the interface by which users experience the artwork. Visitors to the gallery can touch and activate the ‘water touch pad’ onto which words are projected; their movements and choices will call up a wide range of images, texts and moving images that relate to the theme of water. These will be generated and edited dynamically in real-time, producing an unpredictable, unique experience for every user.

Anyone who has walked along a large bridge will know that bridges make sounds – what we can’t hear is the tension of the cables in the atmosphere, which create sonic vibrations across a range of frequencies. Understanding these sounds as a form of music, the artist recorded the song of her first bridge in 1995, and has been engaged with the Singing Bridges project ever since, capturing the unique voices of bridges all over the world. Rose sees each bridge as a musical instrument, and collectively the bridges she has recorded as urban temples, each one an instrument in The Global Bridge Symphony. The culmination of Singing Bridges is the proposed The Global Bridge Symphony, linking together the music of bridges internationally. The artist worked in collaboration with bridge engineers and artists in Singapore using sensor monitoring equipment to explore the technical, philosophical and musical aspects of the cable vibrations through local and global transmissions.

Water in Singapore can never be taken for granted. Most of it is brought into the country from Malaysia, but the city-state is always looking for ways to produce its own supplies, with reverse osmosis being the most recent method. As a metaphor of this ongoing ‘search for water’, the artists are sourcing for water across Singapore using an ancient, albeit completely un-scientific technique. Dowsing is the practice of using a flexible rod to ‘divine’ the location of water underground. It was believed that the dowsing rods acts as an amplifier of the body’s ‘natural’ sensing of underground water.

As a fusion of body, instrument and landscape, dowsing was a pre-scientific form of location-positioning technology, and – for the artwork – the artists tried to combine this age old ‘technology’ with modern sensing methods. The dowsing rods were enhanced with GPS and Motion Sensors, allowing data to be collected, correlated and juxtaposed to hard scientific water data to create a map of potential water sources. And if all goes well, we could end up with ‘new’ newater!

Deserted islands have long fuelled our imaginations with the romantic promise of idyllic isolation, although in reality their discovery often leads to territorial disputes and conflicts between states. For this artwork, Jason Wee has chosen one such space, a ‘white rock’ located off the southwestern tip of the Malayan Peninsula. Contested by both Singapore and Malaysia, it is known by two names, Pedra Branca (for Singapore) and Pulau Batu Puteh (for Malaysia). The artist booked time on a satellite, and had it flown over the contested territory. The satellite is capable of identifying ships by their wake. He then chartered a boat to enter the contested waters, thus crossing paths with the satellite. The satellite capture is shown in the gallery, while the island and its surrounding waters is re-mapped in the form of a 3D CG model so that virtual images are placed alongside the real ones. This artwork is a critical exploration of borders and territories, both actual and imagined.

The smile is probably the most powerful expression we have in our repertoire of facial gestures. It can be used to socially break the ice, to seduce and charm, and to indicate real and fake pleasure and enjoyment. Different professions can be said to have their own particular brand of ‘smile’ which is like a costume or work uniform; from corporate executives to nursery school teachers to exotic dancers. This artwork is an exploration of the subtle messages of compliance, attraction, persuasion and power that the smile sends out, and how our society interprets them. Collecting smiles from residents in Singapore, the artwork results in a gallery installation that involves the projection of ‘smiling patterns’, which the audience will be able to recognize and match with their own smiles.

The title is an ironic reference to the motto of submarine captains in WWII who knew that the silence of their craft was the key to remaining undetected. In contrast this artwork is a whole-hearted embrace of the richly sonic world deep within the ocean.

The work is an ‘audio portrait’ of the Singapore harbour created by recording underwater acoustics, running the gamut from sonar to whalesong. This library of sounds has been further ‘composed’ as a virtual cartographic environment, which invites the visitor to navigate space and simultaneously create a dynamic 3 dimensional soundscape.

This project employs the AudioNomad system to geo-spatially locate hydrophone recordings and other marine audio data, rendering this into a rich map-based composition that allows live ‘mixing’ in the form of Virtual marine journeys. AudioNomad is a collaborative Art + Science Research and development project between the artist (Sonic Objects: Sonic Architecture) and Dr Daniel Woo of the School of Computer Science and Engineering, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Collaborating with the AudioNomad Research Group and Marine Mammal Research Laboratory. Run Silent Run Deep is a co-production between the Artist Dr Nigel Helyer of ‘Sonic Objects; Sonic Architecture’ and the ‘AudioNomad Research Group’ of the University of New South Wales (Dr Daniel Woo, Michael Lake, James Salter).  The artist would like to thank Dr Elizabeth Taylor and the researchers at the Marine Mammal Research Laboratory of the Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore; Dr Mandar Chitre and the researchers of the Acoustic Research Laboratory of the Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore; the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore; the School of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

An interactive video installation that brings together sound and image allowing the viewer to conduct a ‘virtual’ quartet. Four video screens are arranged in the space, each one playing a different percussive instrument by triggering photo-sensors attached to the screens. In this way video images, traditionally conceived as powerless ghosts, are given the ability to affect and even strike physical objects in the real world. The viewers’ gestures at the screens are captured to enable alterations of the musical behavior of the virtual musicians creating a rich interaction between real actions and virtual objects.

Let me walk in your shoes for a day, while you walk in mine. I can hear all of your conversations, intimate and banal; I hear your silences, while simultaneously, you listen to mine. I know where you travel; I listen to your friends, your family, and those who meet you for the first time. We exchange our lives aurally and experience each others’ realities while remaining fixed in our own physical existence. The ability to understand another’s location begins through direct immersion into a new environment. To create meaning, one must be able to experience empathy, an exchange or sensitivity that could be lost in this world of strangers and friends.

In this artwork, pairs of visitors are equipped with mobile telephony garments that remotely transmit their own auditory environments to each other. Through this interactive audio exchange, which oscillates between disorientation, intimate surveillance and a new form of communication, the artwork questions our relationship to space and place, sound and technology.

Power, authority and influence increasingly rely on information networks. Although networks seem to have abolished the old hierarchical structures, such structures are now recast through networking effects that reproduce the power divide between central actors and peripheral content. The race for visibility, both for ranking high in search engines and for accumulating influence in social networking platforms, produces an implicit behaviour of accumulation of links or ‘friends’. The resulting ‘self-referentiality’ is aimed at confirming one’s own position in the network and linking to actors who are always already central. The power gained by connections to and from these centres overrules most of peripheral connectivity and suppresses the potential for dissent within a sphere of influence. This social phenomenon directly accounts for the creation of new public spheres of a global order, which include the production of borders between these spheres.

Exodus is the compound name for a ‘research engine’ into algorithms and visual strategies for searching the internet, revealing the structural properties of web content and its inherent distribution of influence. Exodus promotes bridging behaviour across the web’s new borders of power.

Computer games, along with most other digital interfaces, are primarily about sight, sound and physical movement, so it’s only logical that other senses could play their part as well. The artist is interested in how smell, the olfactory, can be incorporated into gameplay, not just as a novel addition, but as an integral element within the interaction between the player, the game and other players. In this artwork, players will need to navigate their way around a virtual environment using their sense of smell. Sniffing becomes a radical new interface for play, as players will need to recall certain scents in order to accomplish tasks. Players can communicate by triggering these aromas, deciding when and what scents to be emitted during the virtual navigation. Is olfactory gameplay fun or unpleasant? Does it increase immersion in the virtual? This is an ambitious and highly original experiment that reaches into areas of interactivity that are just starting to be explored.

The World Wide Web is an open environment capable of distributing information in a decentralized manner, allowing participation and the constant transformation of its content. DIY GORI focuses on the very nature of the Internet as ‘Open Source Culture’, the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created contents; and it experiments with the idea that objects exist as evolving pieces of digital data in cyberspace where they are continually remixed by users.

As a first experiment for DIY GORI a ‘seed’ was prepared for distribution throughout the Internet. The term ‘Gori’ means open hook in Korean and is often used to refer to the ‘fastening’ and ‘loosening’ of human relationships. The seed to be planted in cyberspace is a blueprint for GORI, a new media plant of physical computing, growing up or dying, fed by network data, connected to the Internet by USB. The blueprint is published on a Wiki site to introduce the project development process and technical details to the net-public/the self-evolving environment for free distribution that any net-citizen can browse and design on their own. At ISEA2008, a selected version of the blueprint is presented as an installation where its Wiki contents are printed and exhibited on a more traditional medium. Seed_1216976400 is the name of the installation and the 10 digits ‘1216976400’ indicate one specific point in time of Wiki history, as a still frame of the seed evolution. It is in fact the converted Unix time stamp of 2008-07-25 00:00:00 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) which is the first day of ISEA2008.

In Eastwood’s earlier ‘modification’ of Sid Meier’s seminal computer strategy game Civilization, Civilization IV players took the role of corporate IT workers. This work continues their project of mapping the aggressive military-capitalist tendencies of ‘real-time’ strategy and online worlds. Civilization V is a game that self-reflexively addresses the competition for dominance between new media companies working with so-called Web 2.0 technologies, such as Facebook, YouTube, and persistently online games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. In order to advance through the game, companies will have to use tactics like ‘Emotional blackmail’, ‘Tribal marketing’ and ‘Love bombing’. The project is using recent researches and developments in the field of digital economy, online marketing and social networking.

The energy given off by bodies, objects, particles and electrical charges of all kinds produces the electro-magnetic field that surrounds us. An invisible landscape that exists within our more tangible, physical environment. The artists are focusing on another wave that opens the doors of the inner realms.  This installation offers an alternative way to render the different states of consciousness through the exploration of cognitive conglomerates. The observer is invited to explore a paradoxical place of creation where the brain waves articulate the evocations of archetypal constructions, and where the consciousness spared of the coagulation of representation, go back to it’s incommunicable and fundamental origin.

Marie Christine Driesen  and Horia Cosmin Samoila explore within the GhostLab, the full spectrum of electromagnetic landscapes, its beyond, and cognitive limits. Their work in this area has manifest themselves in video, performance, installations, and other new media projects.

Collaborating with: Mixed Reality Lab.

Appropriate Response is a generative audio installation that creates an ongoing, dynamic conversation between three modified television sets. Using sound clips harvested from local broadcast media, the televisions will act as individuals engaged in an evolving topical debate. Each individual will share a basic set of rules on how to proceed and a ‘cultural database’ from which to derive responses while also developing a ‘personality’ that will guide specific choices. The sound-archive that the installation draws from will evolve over the course of the exhibition, allowing new information to be gathered and old information to be ‘forgotten’.

Inspired by the proliferation of media in our information-saturated world, the artwork comments on a cut-and-paste ethic that has arisen in contemporary discourse.  It often seems a ‘logic of selection’ is employed in which the juxtaposition of existing information fragments has become an accepted form of constructing an argument, without the need for synthesis or a cumulative rationale.  Can it be appropriate to simply appropriate a response?

The artists would like to thank Dr. Li Haizhou from the I2R, Human Language Technology Department and Joseph Moore.

ABFLUG’s Departure Lounge offers a ‘departure’ point from the mainstream of electronic music into an experimental unknown courtesy of live performers who create soundscapes which blur the line between music and art.

Departure Lounge offers live music and video served by three well-known and experienced Abflug artists. The aim of the lounge is to stimulate interaction between ISEA participants and to entertain them during the symposium.

ABFLUG is a Helsinki-based electronic media Label dedicated to electronic music and video arts. The aural criteria for ABFLUG releases ranges from ambient to experimental to downtempo to deep tech no. Each ABFLUG release includes both an audio and a visual element. The two components, music and video, are complimentary but separate, and not necessarily by the same artist.

Fylkingen has played an important role in the Swedish as well as in the international art world by presenting new currents within the arts and by bridging the gap between visual art and music. Since the ’60s it has been characterized by the explorations of experimental art and an interest in the possibilities opened up by encounters between various art forms and by collaboration.

Today the Fylkingen society comprises some 180 artists active within a number of different areas of expression, from chamber music, electro-acoustic music, dance and video to performance, sound and visual art. From its founding until the ’50s, Fylkingen operated strictly as a society for chamber music. During the ’50s it introduced electro-acoustic music, a music genre still associated with the name Fylkingen. The experimental artistic climate of the ’60s brought about a significant turning point in Fylkingen’s history and Led to a more complex and multifaceted set of activities. It was above all at this time that Fylkingen established its position as advocate of radical and experimental art forms, for example by taking a stand against instrumental music and by presenting new currents within the arts. At ISEA2004 Fylkingen will present shows by Johannes Bergmark & Soren Runolf, Daniel Rozenhall, Line Selander, Per Ahlund & Fredrik Olofsson.

Fylkingen was founded as a non-profit society in 1933 by a group of composers and musicians. The organization of the society includes a board of directors and a production group of active members, the shifting makeup of which has influenced Fylkingen’s programmes and artistic direction through the years.

INTERFACING SOUND Performance

The military-entertainment complex has taken over as the warlords and wizards of symbolic domination and information peacekeeping. Meanwhile, in Super Mario land…

Computer games are overtaking the cultural and economic significance of the movie industry. Although Pong, arguably the first computer game, was a byproduct of DARPA, intended for use in military training, even early games as seemingly innocent as Space Invaders and Pac-Man typically staged a scenario of alien invasion or biological body snatching. Historical games Like Super Mario provide an air of cheerful innocence from a time when digital space was seen as an area of possibilities – rather than a virtual prison in the desert of the real. Inspired by cruise ship entertainment, Konrad Becker will play classic game levels with a beat and a kick, routing 8-bit game console music through notebook patches of musical noise.

The sounds of game playing are triggered and enhanced by a walk through a vast audiovisual 3D environment (based on the Unreal engine) and an 80’s Super Mario emulation. In addition, the game screen is framed by flickering video towers as electronic architectural elements.

At the borderline between sound art, psycho-acoustics and contemporary dance practices, Monoton will feature a selection of 25 years of electronic musical noise. Konrad Becker’s project has crossed a variety of genres over the years starting with meta-mathematical sonic specuLation and performative multimedia installations ranging from industrlal ambience noise to audio software art. Monoton re-emerges into a proto house and techno context. Involved in the early rave scene and later developing extensive theatrical stage productions, Monoton has recently focused on notebook music.

This concert presents a historical overview of computer music works created at the Center for Research in Computing & the Arts (CRCA), University of Calfiornia San Diego during the past 20 years. The program represents computer music that walks the fine line between music and noise.

As computing technology has become more pervasive in the production and presentation of music, our individual and collective concept of noise has evolved. Upon first hearing computer music most listeners have difficulty finding a musical or lyrical handle by which to respond. Upon listening to a broad range of computer music compositions and performances it is difficult to hear musical distincts and nuances unless the listener is trained in contemporary music practice. The level of creativity by the musician or composer, and their level of skill with software and computing devices, must be high or the works will tend to a range of similarity. This concert seeks then to break through the conventional computer music event by arranging a listening program of pieces that have been designed through reductive, destructive, minimalist or explosive techniques to integrate or showcase that ‘thing’ that most people would not equate to music: noise.

The University of California has supported the involvement of musicians and composers in research activities for over 30 years. UC San Diego is home to one of the oldest arts research units in existence, CRCA, the Center for Research in Computing & the Arts, which evolved from a long and established history as for Music Experiment. CRCA is an organized research unit of UCSD, whose mission is to facilitate the invention of new art forms that arise out of the developments of digital technologies. Current areas of interest include networked multimedia, virtual reality, computer-spatialized audio, and live performance techniques for computer music and graphics.

Explorare Invisibilis is a 30-minute, continuously looped electro-acoustic work. It does not make use of any fashion or trend from electronica, techno or ambient music. It instead presents a landscape of three-dimensional energy, implication, sound, and silence. The great explorers travelled to the ‘unknown’, looking for treasures and new lands. Some of the greatest are rumoured to have merely described fictional adventures, travelling only in their imagination. In Explorare Invisibilis, the audience is submerged in spatial reality while the sounds evoke only thoughts of what is or could be ‘real’ through the use of the Latest ambisonics spatialisation technology. The listener is no Longer detached from the sound world projected through the loudspeakers, and instead can immediately embark on their sonic voyage. To complete the environment, lighting, texture and fleeting forms are projected from a synchronised DVD.

Explorare Invisibilis uses second-order ambisonics decoded over 12 loudspeakers arranged spherically around the listener who is elevated into the centre of the array on an acoustically transparent platform.

INTERFACING SOUND LIFE SET

Borgia Ginz is a techno dance music project of Ian Andrews who’s work In a Few Seconds Across the Ocean appears in the ISEA2004 exhibition at Kiasma in Helsinki. Borgia Ginz is one of the latest musical projects of Andrews who has been making electronic music since the early eighties. His previous projects include The Horse He’s Sick[experimental), Hypnoblob [Dub &Jungle) and Disco Stu (techno). Andrews is also a member of the The Sydney based anarcho-techno crew: Organarchy, previously Non Bossy Posse.
A Borgia Ginz set ranges from deep mutoid house and electro-glam, through to machinic Detroit style techno. Andrews’ first Disco Stu album, Adult Themes, was released on Clan Analogue Recordings in 1999. Since then he has released 12″ EPs on the German Ghetto Charge label, on Frankfurt label Cyclotron, and his notorious An Englishman in Ibiza EP on Clan Analogue Recordings.

Northern Lights takes the Aurora Borealis as its source material in a collaboration between art and science.

In 2001 when composer and sound artist Petri Kuljuntausta was searching for new ideas for a forthcoming concert, he discovered that interesting new sound material had recently been recorded under bright Aurora Borealis. During thousands of years many observations have been made, however, there are no earlier measurements or recordings containing similar data. He contacted the person behind the research project, scientist Unto K. Laine, and a listening sesson was promptly arranged at the Acoustic Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology. Kutjuntausta was excited about the originality of the sounds and the sonic range of their characteristics, and the idea of a composition based on these sounds from space began to crystallize. The collaboration had begun.

In this concert we hear the original field recordings as well as processed versions of Auroral sounds. A continuous dialogue between the auroral soundscapes and their digitally manipulated alternate forms is created on stage using only real-time digital sound processors, such as a touch-sensitive sound processor.

For the performance, video director Semi van Ingen has created a visual accompaniment, based on video clips of the Aurora filmed by Unto K. Leine. The videoscapes are closely connected aesthetically to Kuljuntaustais real-time manipulation of the soundscapes.

Babel-On is a sound-based audio-video work exploring the melodic and rhythmic dimensions of human spoken language. This sound and four large-scale projection digital video piece with synchronized sound focuses on languages as musical instruments of communication and concentrates on the sound of human verbal expression rather than on its meaning.

The work features close-up video images of a multitude of people of numerous nationalities and races speaking in their respective Languages about these very languages. With its language-based sonic accompaniment, it creates a fpolyphonic chorus of voices and idioms in continuous interplay, correspondence and/or conflict, suggesting various relationships between diverse geopolitical regions, cultural traditions and civilizations. Babel-On is intended to create a very physical, living audio-video flow of associations and dissociations, of different tensions, between image and sound, speech and music, words and significations, intention and chance – a constant flux of unstable, slipping, shifting anings and perceptions. It is an experiential piece that evokes the non-verbal itilities of vocal communication.

Babel-On is a collaboration between New York intermedia artist/composer Phill Niblock and Montreal video/multimedia artist Katherine Liberovskaya.

Shifting Nature is an interactive art installation that provides a visual projection by tracing the movement of users within the exhibition space. The installation was influenced by minimal art principles based on the theory that art is created out of simple unitary forms, which will be distorted by human interaction.

Shifting Nature is a study of graphic visual forms, projected onto semitransparent glass in order to represent nature’s influences on human development in art, culture and the living environment. The visual, aural and interactive elements of this installation enable the audience to experience unusual visual sensations when encountering the work.

The installation creates a reaction to space and the environment. It is a representation of a continuous activity, bringing back a sense of belonging and a deeper understanding about the relationship between man, nature and technology. One unique aspect to the work is its ‘multiple-point’ interactive technique that enables the installation to detect and react to multiple user movements/interactions simultaneously.

Hyperthesis Visual Lab is a design communication group from New Zealand and Malaysia. It was formed to explore new innovations in design, and to search for strategic solutions in global communication, new media and education.

Induction House is an architecture prototype looking into ways of treating digital media as physical matter. The surface of a computer projection is unfolded onto a structure, becoming a spatial experience.
Aether Architecture is an adventurous collaboration between Adam Somlai-Fischer, Peter Hudini and Anita Pozna. Our focus is on design research relating to spatialities in actual and virtual environments. Our driving force is to create a valid architectural response to the rapidly changing social spaces of the information and media society, where information and its re-organizing effects have dramatically altered our perception and understanding of spaces.

Such new architectures are not yet present, so to test new concepts, our investigations are carried out through the making of ‘architecture prototypes’ – installations that combine both physical design and engineering as well as computer programming and graphics. Our media design focuses on low-tech solutions by re-appropriating existing tools and technologies for new functionalities. These installations – for example Aether Induction House – are then presented to the public, where the exhibition is used as a test bed for later evaluation in order to assess how certain issues and spatialities are responded to by visitors and professional discourse

AETHER ARCHITECTURE is a Barcelona->Budapest->Stockholm design and research collaborative focusing on architecture, digital media, interaction design and related academic teaching. Work is produced on various platforms, in different collaborations.

Sankari is karaoke, a TV-drama and a video game.

Sankari Show is a participatory video show about Elias. Elias is quite a nice guy, but he is not able to speak – so he is a little bit helpless on his own. Actually, Elias does speak, but it is the audience that gives Elias their own voice. That is the genius of the show – what they say defines his future. Sankari is an improvisation show offering people a fun way to perform in front of an audience. It is a combination of karaoke, drama and video game. “Sankari” is the Finnish word for a hero. It also means the main character in a story

The format of Sankari is based on interactive scenes where the participant improvises with virtual characters. The scenes consist of small video fragments. We listen to the improvisation and choose how other characters react by showing different video dips. The story can develop in many directions depending on the performance. Elias works in a bar, but he wants to get famous. He dreams of a career as a talk show host, and of the beautiful rock star, Laura. Tonight Laura and big TV-producer Anders are coming to meet Elias. For Elias this means a date and a job interview at the same time.

Can you help Elias in his tricky situation? Whether Elias succeeds or fails depends on what you say. If you screw up it doesn’t matter because it is Elias who screws up. And in any case the audience has a great time – whatever happens, Sankari makes you a great entertainer. Sankari is created by Petri Kola and Minna Nurminen and hosted by Zarkus Poussa. Zarkus has his highly danceable gig after Sankari, so the positive vibes continue.

Unstablelandscape is my artistic and research platform to investigate and deploy: Dance improvisation within digitally augmented environments; The dramatic tension between design and desire, abstract patterns and anthropomorphic depictions; Real time composition or improvisational performances with hybrid systems (humans, computers and other living systems); The improvisational creative act with generative strategies and systems; Alternative human-computer interfaces for dance performance and multimedia installations; Embodied, embedded and distributed cognition; The relation between moving bodies, cognition, technology and the design of experiences and realities; The intelligence of biological systems and bottom-up or biologically inspired architectures for art making and performance systems and?The relation between improvisational digital pop-culture (DJ/VJ), art making and social events/performances.

WIRELESS EXPERIENCE INSTALLATION

In Free Evenings and Weekends, CLN SWP seeks to create a site-specific sound performance for Max/MSP, audience participation, and cellular phones. The project acknowledges a reorganization of contemporary urban space/ soundscapes at the hands of widespread cellular phone use by initiating a series of chance operations which “instrumentize” the performer’s mobile phones.

A series of homemade, mobile phone activity detectors serve as triggers controlling a Max/MSP program. These devices monitor -handshakes” between handheld units and transmitter towers when a call is placed or received. The installation is dependent on mobile phone activity to generate audio, and without signal activity on the frequencies used by GSM phones it would remain silent. This serves to underscore a current fact of the “wireless revolution”: that it is in the hands of those who can afford it.

The audio program in Max/MSP consists of a series of voice recordings that make up a non-ordered glossary of terms which are neither Swedish nor English, but a mutation of both languages. The intention here is to render audible all that which is normally silent the signal rather than the ring, etc.) and subvert the standard hierarchy for “Listening” to/for one’s phone in terms of static/noise rather than message.

CLN SWP is a recently-formed artists’ collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their projects involve collaborative work with a political emphasis between visual artists and writers who work with film, video, text, installation, and performance.

WIRELESS EXPERIENCE

WiFi Radio is an attempt to make perceptible the invisible fields of the wireless internet, and to create the experience of moving through wireless information as if it were physical.

Encased in a hacked Walkman radio, WiFi Radio receives information packets moving through the ambient wireless internet and transforms them into voices, so you hear the websites, passwords, usernames and other information flowing on the internet. To simulate movement through this space, we attach various sensors such as accelerometers, which alter the voice reading the wireless message. For example, if you are moving quickly you only hear snippets of a great deal of wireless data, but spoken softly. If you stand still you begin to hear less packets, but what you hear is louder and longer.

The goal is to create an environment and an experience where you are awoken from your dogmatic perception of the world and begin to incorporate these invisible fields into your perceptive range.

WIRELESS EXPERIENCE

The Cartographic Command Centre will serve as a space which allows ISEA participants to explore several web-based and mobile cartography applications as interactive VR environment in 3D.

The Cartographic Command Centre will serve as a space which allows ISEA participants to explore several web-based and mobile cartography applications, and general the field of ‘locative media’. It will use a variety of web-cartography applications to display: Geographic Information Systems [GIS) databases of GPS waypoints, climatological data, geological data, local historical data, and geo-encoded information produced specifically for ISEA by this project and hopefully by other ‘geo’ projects at ISEA as well.

The Locative Media Lab is a collective of new media artists, developers and researchers, exploring the design of new time-space-social interfaces through wireless networking and locative media (mapping and positioning). Currently the Locative Media Lab is collaborating with the RIXC in Riga, Latvia and Project Atol from Slovenia, on various international events and projects.

POD (2003) is the first installation created for the Wind Array Cascade Machine (WACMI data network. POD is a 64 channel light installation, that uses nearly 3000 Light Emitting Diodes to portray a 4 dimensional portrait of the wave movement of the wind. The wind amplitude of each WACM tilt sensor is streamed to the individual LED pods 1 to 1, with each light cluster or pod resembling the amplitude meter of a audio mixing console. PODS also visually refers to the tali grass and grain of the Canadian prairies which inspired the project. The telematic data is produced by the 64 tilt sensors of the WACM system, situated outside, on the artist’ studio rooftop in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This real time data is streamed over the Internet to the POD installation at Kiasma for the duration of the exhibition.

A wearable, wireless interactive billboard is being carried through public spaces. StalkShow deals with the threat of insecurity and isolation. It invites the audience to participate and give this threat a personal face and space; to expose both its horror and its beauty.

StalkShow takes place in public spaces such as railway stations, festivals, museums, squares, and airports. Karen Lance! carries an interactive billboard containing a laptop with a touch screen around these spaces. People are invited to touch the screen and to navigate through texts about the threat of insecurity and isolation.

StalkShow texts originate from a collection of statements that Lancet has been collecting from the internet since 2000. The statements – “personal strategies for dealing with a social space” – have been written by people living in isolation, such as a prisoner, a nun, an asylum seeker, and a digi-persona.

By navigating through the StalkShow texts, the audience is invited to generate their own montage of social strategies. With the aid of a webcam and wireless internet connection, live video portraits of members of the audience appear together with the statements on a large projection screen in the same public space. Projected, ‘watching’ faces, view the (watching] audience,

Thanks to: Amsterdam Fund for the Art, Fund for Performance Art, [Nes]theaters Amsterdam, Foundation DasArts; and Mart van Bree, G. Heeg, Hermen Maat, Robert Steijn, Jason Wilson.

Light Rain is a fusion of two works – Rebecca Cummins’ The Rainbow Machine 119981 and Paul DeMarinis’ RainDance (1998) – that explore the acoustic and optical phenomenal properties of water droplets. Among the many 19th century attempts to make sound visible, the physicist Savart’s discoveries of the effect of sound on water streams led to avenues of research that are still actively explored. A stream of water falling from a faucet, though it looks continuous, is actually a series of distinct droplets falling at intervals. Sound vibrations can influence the structure of the stream, producing distinct visual patterns. What is more amazing is that these patterns preserve aspects of the sound signal itself, such that when the drops fall on a resonating surface recognizable melodies are produced. Like its predecessor RainDance, Light Rain uses this phenomenon to play musical melodies on spectators’ umbrellas.

The falling water also produces primary and secondary rainbows while the sun shines. The spectra of the rainbow are virtual images caused by the refraction of light in water droplets. With early morning and late afternoon light, the rainbows appear high in the sky; at mid-day, circular spectra form on the ground. Depending on the viewer’s position relative to the sun and water, the rainbow may appear to be 2 or 60 meters across.

In this literally ‘immersive’ installation you can let the sunlight fall on your back and follow your shadow into the rainbow, or intercept the water streams with your umbrella to initiate surprising sound effects.

Tentacle is best described as a transmitting sculpture. The Beeoffs studio in Stockholm forms the main body with tentacles at several sites: Kiasma, Stockholm lKungstradOrdeni, Paris iLaVillette), New York [Eyebearril and Montreal (SAT). At each location there will be a camera and a monitor/projector. The images from the cameras will be transmitted to the Beeoff studio in Stockholm where they will then be combined into a single, TV-quality stream.

The Tentacle is a piece by the Swedish artist group Beeoff (Mikael Scherdin, Olle Huge and Tomas Linell). The group was formed in the mid 1990’s and have since then been exploring the boundaries between analogue and digital, and new and traditional media – always focusing on real-time production and distribution.

Path of Illusion is based on reflections concerning the manipulation of contemporary Thai society by commercial advertising with the aim of instilling false artificial values (as opposed to true intrinsic human values) in the lives of the majority of people. The familiar sight of 5 electricity poles of tapering sizes positioned strategically illuminating the streets and generating conspicuous computer designed commercial advertising forms, distort and exploit people solely for commercial interests. This distortion and exploitation lead to a false sense of material well-being and resultant unconscious indulgences in what is believed to be material progress at the expense of proper perspectives of life and its true values or meanings.

fluID is a multi-user computer game about identities. You can discover your identity, change it, steal or borrow another person’s identity, destroy identities or create new ones from scratch.

What is an identity? It is the idea that single parts of yourself belong together. It is the idea that your past, your present and your future all belong to one single owner, called: YOU.

Do cities have identities as well? Mathias Fuchs and Sylvia Eckermann, developers of fluID believe that cities have fluid identities. They relocate Gilles Deleuze’s question “what is the identity of a particular city, a person, a face?” into an artistic context, which is a gaming context as well. As users, participants are able to explore the changing identities of Tallinn, Helsinki and other cities, through a virtual cityscape.

The fluID game puts you into a terrain of identities where you start as a perfect nobody. You have no face, no name, no clothes, no sex, not a single thing to differentiate you from other players.

So now’s your chance! Try to be someone!

In a Few Seconds Across the Ocean refers to, and interrogates a number of references from 20th century art that might broadly be described as “a poetics of wireless technology,” ranging from the Futurist poetry of Marinetti to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 1966 work Hymnen: anthems for electronic and concrete sounds.

Following Marconi’s 1909 invention of wireless telegraphy, a plethora of poetic texts influenced by this new science appeared across Europe. Wireless communication, became an aesthetically determining factor, in both poetic form and content. This work utilises a generative techniques (random number generation, permutative structures, and graphics/sound interaction) to produce aleatory music, graphics and text based around these writings. The piece plays in a Loop that never repeats in the same way, and the generative structure is designed to create a multi-channel sound environment where the randomisation of the process distributes the different sound elements throughout the space.

In a Few Seconds Across the Ocean attempts to go beyond the uncritical (re}production of modernist themes and aesthetics (singularity, purity, form over content) which have become all to common in sound work. Instead it seeks to interrogate modernist aesthetics from a standpoint which is hybrid, fragmented, culturally dispersed and informed by post-modern (inter)textuality. It attempts to displace the idealist opposition of divine, or natural writing (‘Words in Freedom’), over human finite inscription, which characterises many of the Constructivist and Futurist texts, instead, shifting the Formalist concept of ‘poetic language’ towards noise and difference.

For 15 years, Timo Kahlen has investigated “immaterial” phenomena in numerous wind installations, sound pieces and experimental media works. His most recent sound sculpture, Media Dirt (2004), will be created especially for exhibition in Kiasma.

Media Dirt consists of three glass cylinders (approx. 152 cm high), several loudspeakers (on the floor inside the cylinders) and the gurgling, whispering, hissing, singing, “dirty” sound of radio interference – the nomadic, temporary, immaterial noise and beauty found in-between radio stations. The radio interference – constant radiation that occupies the apparently ’empty’ air that surrounds us all the time – creates a complex, artificial, purely technological but seemingly-natural setting-with references to insects whirring through the air, to birds singing. In this way, the glass cylinders become the laboratory for a reconstruction, a new abstract form of ‘nature’” -Werner Ennokeit

INTERFACING SOUND

Harvester is an installation that employs sound, kinetic elements, and interactivity to create a shifting audio field from a system of controlled feedback.

In Harvester the sounds heard are derived from the piece itself: a set of feedback tones that arise naturally from the electronic components. These tones are a real-time monitor of the status of the piece as it moves and changes. Harvester is constructed using a set of microphones held at the ends of slender, flexible support stands and moved by electric motors. The stands are distributed around a space so that visitors can walk among them. The microphones pick up ambient sounds, including their own amplified signal. These sounds are processed and sent to the speakers resulting in a feedback network whose sound varies as microphones move.

As visitors move through Harvester, they can affect its behaviour by their physical presence in the path of the sound. The interaction in Harvester occurs without the visitor having to actively address any sort of technology; both the visitor input and its results occur in real physical space. It is a form of interaction that is both complex and subtle, one that is intuitively engaging and rewards extended interaction. The installation allows participation in a kind of living system that is both a metaphor for the myriad ways in which electronic and physical acoustic spaces are mapped onto one another, and an example of exactly such a space.

The origins of Scramble Suit lie in the name of the three-dimensional kinetic costumes used to hide the identities of undercover narcotic agents in Philip K. Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly.

In the installation users encounter a real-time projection of their own image, which soon comes under attack from a computer generated ‘kinetic monster’. The monster attempts to cover the user’s projected image in order to take control of it. When the user moves and tries to avoid the visual invasion, she becomes engaged in a struggle to keep her own appearance. If the visual invasion is successful, the creature takes control of the user’s image, sucking and transforming it into a part of itself. Users are encouraged to engage in a physical dialogue with their newly transformed counterparts in an attempt to recapture their image. Scramble Suit transforms the user’s reflection into a media zombie, which remains wandering around the screen until somebody gives it an identity again.

The installation deals with the vulnerability of our self-representation, which can be shattered in an instant by an outside force. It effectively encourages people to fight for their own image and protect it from the manipulative, cloning effects of the Scramble Suit.

Constructed Narratives is a block-based construction game designed for adults based on the form and function of children’s construction toys. It is a tangible social interface designed for use in public spaces where people have the opportunity to encounter the game and subsequently learn about each other.

The hardware and software system architecture developed for this project could be applied for experimental computer-based interfaces for several human computer interaction and interactive art domains including collaborative learning [CSCL), and collaborative design activities in the tradition of computer supported collaborative work ICSCWI. The current domain explored for Constructed Narratives is that of computer systems designed to enable shared experience through play, or computer supported collaborative play (CSCP).

The goal of the Constructed Narratives project is to develop a framework for the design of social interfaces, or “discourse wranglers”. The social interface is a catalyst for the transformation and reinvention of the social and cultural environment. The”discourse wrangler-facilitates the communication and contextualization of ideas, assumptions and beliefs among its users. The act and metaphor of construction is used to illustrate how a simple artefact can provide an interactive platform for discourse between collaborating participants.

Constructed Narratives provides a common ground for negotiation around issues of identity, culture and values that can form invisible walls between the self and others in public spaces. To construct is to creatively invent one’s world by engaging in creative decision-making and problem solving activities.

Zona de Recreo consists of a multiuser, interactive interface that controls 3D games in real time. By joining physical interfaces and videogames Diego Dias and Clara Boj try to introduce new methods of gameplay that mix physical and virtual elements.

Zona de Recreo was born from the transformation of a traditional children’s game called Balancing. This work establishes new systems of relations by introducing a physical interface that permits four people to interact in the virtual space of a multiuser game. To physically move the structure, or to explore and navigate within the virtual space, the participant uses their body weight and balance. Zona de Recreo forces us to cooperate and participate in a group from a physical point of view. We have to move the structure collectively in the real. world – a sharp contrast to traditional game design in which collaboration is carried out only in the mediated, virtual realm. Zona de Recreo unites the physical and virtual collaboration in a new videogame system that favours verbal communication between the participants.

This project is an attempt to challenge the abandonment of urban public space by exploring new ways of interacting that permit users to play games through physical communication and interaction with others.

The lives of three families in the Helsinki region will be brought together into an audiovisual presentation using MMS narratives. The stories will unfold in three adjacent windows on the project website and in the Kiasma video projection. A low fourth window is open for audience participation…

Situations4x takes as its starting point the fluidity of MMS imaging in constructing real time visual narratives as actual events unfold. The low image resolution, which favours details and close-up images rather than panoramic views, alongside the instantaneity of the image capture, are here developed to create a practice that enables a group of people to be virtually present in each other’s lives.

The time stamp that accompanies every MMS message is, in the Situations4x expriment, used as the key structural element. On one hand, it is used as the that automatically organizes an image sequence into a narrative sequence according to the time. On the other hand, the connection of any particular event to certain date is broken and replaced with a thematic connection. In the space of audiovisual presentation, the families, as well as the participating audience, experience together the variations of an imaginary summer day in August 2004. Thematically, Situations4x exposes the invisible everyday lives of the three families for public view and participation. But as the camera phones begin to circulate among the family members, it may also highlight differences in the ideas of what constitutes a “family”.

BuBL Space is a concept device and complete marketing strategy. A small portable device, like a mobile phone, creates a phone-free zone around the user. A personal space in public space where one will no longer be disturbed by the noises emitted by ringing mobile phones and the people that use them.

The marketing strategy for BuBL Space targets the same groups as mobile phone companies; the device is designed as a small, stylish gadget in white silicon rubber. It comes packaged in inflated transparent plastic. Flyers and posters show a young model enjoying her personal space while using the device. This strategy not only shows the real marketing potential that BuBL Space offers, but also plays with the interchangeability of hype and gadgets. it clears the way for an ‘arms race’ of devices and counter-devices within the marketing space of a young urban public.

BuBL Space is designed to be a ‘friendly’ device. The three main differences between BuBL Space and existing GSM blockers are its portability, its working radius [three meters, so it really focuses on the personal space) and the way it operates: it only works while its button is pressed, so it can’t be switched on permanently. This means it takes an active decision every time BuBL Space is used.

WEARABLE EXPERIENCE in PUBLIC SPACE

The Blanket Project is a robotic blanket that resides on top of a bed. Sensing the presence of viewers it attempts to lure them on to the bed for a physical exchange.

The Blanket Project is a tactile object that physically interacts with the audience. Resembling a blanket, the device navigates through space, seeking out individuals for intimate encounters. The object is embedded with electronics and machinery to enable sensing and movement. The resulting form is a hybrid toy, sculpture and tool.

The blanket has been designed with modularity and multipurpose reusability in mind. Its application varies to suit the site-specific context. It could be used within a dance or performance context. Two blankets can be networked together to transmit touch information between two remote users. A blanket can also be automated as a house pet of sorts – which is the case in this installation.

The blanket resides on top of a giant bed. It remains at rest until approached by a viewer. The blanket then attempts to engage viewers in physical relationships. It approaches their positions and reaches out to touch them. Viewers receive no instructions regarding the installation, and must decide their own level of participation. They are welcome to remain at a distance and observe the phenomenon of an animated household object. Alternatively they may mount the bed and engage the blanket in a physical relationship, becoming an active part of the installation for other viewers.

(Re)design your very own label for one of your favourite products! Simple, quick, reliable and easy just make a selection from the menus and click on ‘Print’.

Shilpa Gupta’s My Own Label project develops a new approach to the subversive activity known as ‘shopputting’ — where home-made artefacts [CD’s, sandwiches etc.) are taken to supermarkets and left amongst the retail produce for customers to discover and purchase (or steal!). Instead of creating a new product. however, My Own Label allows you to create a new label which can replace the label for an existing product.

It a project based on excessive branding in a world where consumerism reaches ever higher levels in the capitalist economy, and where globalization is still pretty much a one-way street without sign posts or rules (read: WTO guidelines). It is also a subtle critique of art, which Gupta believes has become too comfortable in its elitist circles to employ a language that is accessible to a wider audience. It also intents to address authorship [via its erasure] and the extension of the electronic medium into outside ‘lived’ space.

Advice Lounge is a meeting point in two senses — in the real world passers-by can drop in for a spot of non-professional advice on a subject of their choosing; in so doing they take part in a public, participatory performance which is combined with web-based interactive media.

Jillian McDonald describes her participatory installation Advice Lounge as “a physical incarnation and extension of an existing web-based intervention where I offer free non-professional advice to strangers. I will be present in a public space outfitted with comfortable chairs, quiet looped music, and two laptops. Passers-by will be invited to seek free advice on various matters”.

As the participant enters the booth the advice session begins. A contract is signed in order that the participant knows they are agreeing to receive advice of a non-professional nature. The participant and artist take their place at the two computers facing each other or in opposite directions, according to taste, and begin an online advice session, Both artist and participant will be visible to an audience of passers-by outside the lounge, and the Advice Lounge interface will also projected onto a window to entice others to participate. The fact that the two parties communicate through the computer interface rather than viscerally will serve to privatize the experience, despite its public nature, in the manner of confessional or therapist’s office. The piece will exist simultaneously allowing a ‘third’ audience of Internet visitors to participate as well.

Artists Laetitia Delafontaine and Gregory Niel create spaces where skin-like membrane interacts with the user. This membrane is connected and driven by software interface, and controls the geometrical definition of the space. Creating direct relationship and dialog with the visitor, the surface of the space is dynamic and it’s shape can be modified. It is a search of a space reactive to its environment, an interface sensitive to vibrations of sound frequencies.

The reactive space project, RS-3, creates a space where a surface or membrane interacts with the user. This membrane is connected and driven by a software interface, and controls the geometrical definition of the space. To create a direct relationship and dialogue with the visitor, the surface is dynamic and can be morphed out of shape. The RS-3 installation is comprised of a floor/map which interacts with sound frequencies. The floor is formed of a flexible surface that moves in relation to sound frequencies. A camera films the distortion of the floor in real time, and a video projection of the camera input recreates the sensation of the space. The combination of the floor and the projection creates an immersive, reactive space. The reactive space is created with the collaboration of Studio Creatif of France Telecom R&D. The research into “reactive space” and habitat is sponsored by the research grant “PUCA” [Plan Urbanisme Construction Architecture) of the ministry for equipment and urbanism [France) around the theme the future of habitat”.

DN is Laetitia Delafontaine and Gregory Niel. They work with the relationships between architecture, art and new technology. While studying sensitive and reactive space, they have created, with the collaboration of France Telecom R&D, an installation which reacts to the presence of the body in its environment.

ID Communications is an interactive installation which also works as a welcoming gate to one of the ISEA2004 exhibitions in Tallinn. In fact, it could also serve as an entry point to the Tallinn part of ISEA2004 – for visitors coming from the ferry, the Rotermann Salt Storage warehouse is the first ISEA2004 venue you will encounter. ID Communicationsexpresses stories about Estonian identity. The visitor steps onto one of the twenty stars on the ground and starts a dialog between two monitor ‘heads’ of the artists. Each star represents one of the European Union membership countries. The dialog between the two artists reflects on the new situation of joining the EU. As a consideration to visitors from other EU countries, the artists provide them with some information about Estonian culture – how to speak Estonian and how to behave according to the local customs. The artist-group ID have been inspired by the EU law which obligates the members to honour the customs, languages and culture of the other states. The goal of the artists is not to become like the other EU members, but to explore and study their culture as is befitting to a new member of the union. The authors acquired information about the various EU nations mainly from the web, adding a little conviction into the fragmented mix of information gathered.

ID was founded in summer 2001 by Estonian multimedia artists Ivika Kivi and Dagmar Kase.

Desert Views, Desert Deaths is a large-scale computer installation of an interactive stereoscopic immersive environment. It was created as a memorial for those who have died of dehydration and heat exhaustion while crossing the border from Mexico into the United States.

The strict enforcement of border crossings has forced migrants away from the main routes and cities they have taken in the past, to more remote desert locations. In the summer the desert temperatures reach 37-48°C for more than three consecutive months. Illegal ‘border guides’ drop people off in the middle of the desert with one jug of water. They are told that the nearest city is an hour away when in fact it is often over 2 days away on foot. Last year a record number of people died of heatstroke or dehydration while crossing the border. This year hundreds more will die in the Sonoran Desert.

This virtual unreality is a memorial for those who have died while crossing the desert. When you enter Desert Views, Desert Deaths you are in the middle of an elusive graveyard of crosses. In the distance you can see into translucent overlapping caskets composed of desert images. You enter the life-size caskets and see the names of those who died of heat and dehydration while crossing the border. As you follow the caskets you find more information about the people. While traversing the landscape you hear sounds of the desert following you as you continue your journey.

Remote access to the artwork via the internet eliminates the physical boundaries of distance. Remote viewers/users can leave a tangible residue of their virtual presence and watch real-time participants via a web cam. Adams states that “viewers leave fragile traces of both real time and virtual interactions that create a complex interplay between participants, machines and locations — merging and rupturing identities.”

Wave Writer employs an immersive, interactive installation format that encourages empathy between the viewer and the artwork. It poses questions about what it means to be human in the twenty-first century, and the ways in which our understanding of ourselves will be changed by contemporary developments in biotechnology. Wave Writer examines the human urge to make a mark, to leave a trace of one’s presence. Visitors to the exhibition in Tallinn will interact directly with Trish Adams’ installation through a Kymograph – a machine invented in the 1840’s that was used extensively in various scientific disciplines. Individuals physically impress and transfer their energies by stepping on a foot pedal, displacing a pen and thus recording their presence as a change in the continuous line on a rotating ream of paper.

Venus Villosa is an interactive installation staged around the sense of touch. It refers to the western myth of the Beast, particularly to the dichotomy of “beauty and beast”. It comments on the unresolved ambivalence of our relationship towards nature as it concerns our body and our identity. As new technologies allow the exploration of a different level of interactivity and involvement of the body in the sphere of the artistic experience, a subsequent need to rethink some of the metaphors associated to the different senses emerges.

Venus Villosa’s journey into the erratically unlawful act of touch takes the shape of a tactile interface, nested into the referential landscape of the mythical Beast, the archetypical representation of the unconscious mind. The installation enhances the physicality of the interactive experience and at the same time it critically addresses the notion of the body as the polarizing subject against which the culture of technology shapes its dreams of disembodiment.

Venus Villosa’s is articulated around three metaphors – the sense of touch, hair and the breast – as a way to unfold the dichotomies of the beauty and the beast, the ideal and the material, the natural and the artificial. The interactivity works as a meta-commentary, reinforcing the significance of the user’s experience as a whole. By engaging in the usually forbidden activity of touching art (and breasts), the user turns the beauty into the beast.

The Relative Velocity Inscription Device is a live scientific experiment in the form of an automated electronic installation in which Paul Vanouse literally races skin-colour genes from his Jamaican-American family against one another.

Vanouse’s work Operational Fictions/The Relative Velocity Inscription Device explores peculiar intersections of “big-science” and popular culture. It addresses complex issues raised by varied new technologies through these very technologies. These Operational Fictions are hybrid entities — simultaneously functional machines and fanciful representations — which are intended to resonate in the equally hyper-real context of the contemporary landscape. Contextualizing this work are previous projects involving human genomics such as Cult of the New Eve and his current project Latent Figure Protocol.

Safe As Mother’s Milk: The Hanford Project is a website and installation examining the atomic history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The project incorporates recently declassified documents and historical photographs available online through the Hanford Declassified Document Retrieval System.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is Located on 565 square miles of desert in south-eastern Washington State. For more than forty years, Hanford released radioactive materials into the environment and onto an uninformed public while producing plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War era. Although the majority of the releases were due to activities related to production, some were also planned and intentional.

Hanford workers, their families and other downwind residents became guinea pigs for radiation experiments that were carried out at the facility by the former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense, and civilian sub-contractors including DuPont and General Electric from 1944 to 1972.

Safe as Mother’s Milk examines these events through declassified historical photographs, media and documents available online at various government archives, like the Hanford Declassified Document Retrieval System and Human Radiation Experiments Information Management System (HREX).

This project illustrates how the internet may be used to investigate, research, and disseminate “unofficial” social and political histories to the public.

Com_muni_port is a portable radio broadcast unit created for short-range pedestrian broadcasting. It has been designed to facilitate community communication, munition municipality and portal portability.
Com_muni_port models itself after historical military, scientific, and commercial communication devices. However, to distinguish it from its many predecessors, Com_muni_port activates the local and functions as a tool for information dissemination and public participation. Its transmission range is determined and limited by the plateaus and canyons of urban space. Its dispatch is an invisible membrane of suspended audio, the radius of which moves with the user, Com_muni_port consists of an FM transmitter, a CD player, a microphone, headphones, and a multi-channel mixer – all battery powered. Its portability makes it ideal for use within political demonstrations and marches, by mapping audio frequency within a city, and allowing spontaneous interviewing and broadcasting. We see it as having myriad communicatory and inventive functions, all in one unit.

Weather Report is a highly compressed found-sound story, heard as a drifting voicemail message from a weather balloon. A hybrid 21-minute documentary collected and edited outdoors, where it is best heard walking with headphones. So go find a Walkman!

Janek Schaefer produced Weather Report during his trips to Minnesota as a McKnight Composer in Residence with the American Composers Forum. “I lived in Minneapolis in December 02 and June 03 where they love their diverse and often hostile weather, which was the catalyst for the project.

“My main ideas were to create and collect new sounds that were related to the concept of weather in the broadest sense; to document and research weather in the media; and to float recording equipment up on weather balloons in various ways. These processes were integral, as my focus was on sound ‘associated’ with the weather, rather than the weather itself.

“The weather balloons were used in three main ways. Firstly one icy winter’s morning I attached a mobile phone to receive and send low-resolution sound, letting it float away from the surface of a frozen Lake. Secondly using a digital Dictaphone I made time-lapse recordings of the sky by floating it 500ft above my lush metropolitan neighbourhood. Lastly a few all-American friends and I set out to shoot the balloon down Late one June afternoon, Leaving the sound to parachute back to earth. I Let the recordings speak for themselves, no effects, no EQ, just straight cut and splice collage where you can hear the edges of time. All temperatures in Fahrenheit!”

Group C.Cred explores local socio-political terrain in Tallinn and how it could be mapped, also what kind of trajectories could be found. C.Cred works collaboratively with local artists, activists and collectives and will during the event be developing local platforms including an installation of the existing Counter/Cartographies archives linked to a series of informal live events: walks, drives, journeys; dinner, drinks, discussions or interviews. Certain aspects of these events are documented as cartographies by themselves and added to the expanded archive/cartographies and installations.

The District of Leistavia Welcomes You was created specifically for ISEA 2004. It is part of the interRepublic of Hybridia, a non-geographical entity whose borders are mediated by digital files. Leistavia is a hybrid cultural space influenced by Pitcairn Island, Norfolk Island and Estonian cultures.

Questioning the boundary between and technology and culture is one of the main concerns of this project. Cultural theorists today are examining culture from the point of view of processes of change rather than fixed tradition — giving rise to the consideration of cultural hybridisation.

The project set out to Locate intercultural connections between Estonian, Norfolk Island and Pitcairn Island cultures. These connections were overlapped to create a hybrid culture — Leistavia. A constitution voting form was drafted, influenced by aspects of concern to people of the contributing nations, as located on the Internet and via email. Open voting determined the final constitution.

The process of creating the art work is documented on the website art-themagazine.com; an anti-video – a moving image projection consisting of a sequence of still images ‘of’ Leistavia was created; and the concept of a digital language — written but not spoken — identified: Keyboard, the native language of Hybridia. These elements were assembled for the gallery installation.

Estonian dance and media artist Kylli Mariste collaborated, and many have given images and thoughts – this project would not have been possible without their contribution.

Provoked by the notion of “the lack of women’s voices”, the Ruta Remake project works to map out relations concerning a politics of identity in Lithuania today. Ruta Remake unfolds as a search system that is suggested as the play between forms, ranging from the remainders of the ‘Homo Sovieticus’ through to the Modern Capitalistic Model.

Linguists, philosophers and music theorists join the Ruta Remake project to investigate the contemporary state of women’s voices. Through the shared recollections of media they build a pathway to navigate through a collection of samples that reflect social construction and metaphysical qualities, resulting in a ‘voice archive’.

Participants suggested a specific weaving pattern named Ruta (rue) that refers to a perennial plant. In Lithuania, this pattern was imbued with different meanings, to become an icon representing virginity and femininity. The Ruta pattern provides a system for sound notation, a shuttle for composing the voice threads of the archive, as lines of information and as routes, joined in patterns.

Ruta Remake employs an updated version of the Thereminvox, the TheraMiDi device, which allows a user’s hand gestures to mediate between sets of acoustic samples using two light-sensitive resistors linked through a MIDI interface. The hand’s movement within light casts shadows, and these register output and representation. In this way the TheraM/D/ based navigation turns the user into a performer, charting a path through the sound archive of voices in real time and weaving patterns to compose a sound fabric.