May 14th, 2009
The audio augmented reality installation: “SoundDelta- untitled” (pdf) will be presented at Maison des Metallos in Paris, from 15th May to 7th June 2009.
Dans une zone ponctuée de traces lumineuses au sol, le visiteur muni d’un casque audio est invité à explorer librement l’espace. Au cours de la trajectoire, des sources sonores ponctuelles s’activent lorsqu’on les traverse. La musique est écrite, c’est à dire structurée dans le temps, mais seule la déambulation du spectateur l’actualise, la révèle. Libre à chacun d’inventer son parcours : se laisser porter par la musique, se rapprocher des sources guidé par l’appel de la lumiére, en expérimenter les limites spatiales ou temporelles…
English translation by myself:
In an area punctuated by zones of light on the ground, the visitor, equipped with headphones, is invited to freely explore the space. Sound sources are activated as the listener crosses the zones of light. The music is “written” - that is to say structured in time - but it is only actualised and revealed by the movement of the spectator. The listener is free to make their own way through the piece - to be carried by the music, or guided by the light zones towards individual sounds - to experiment with its spatial and temporal limits.
Credits:
Posted in Audio Augmented Reality, Binaural, Exhibition, Installation, Locative spatial audio, Projects I've worked on, Spatial Audio | No Comments »
May 9th, 2009
Carsten Nicolai has released a new book:
Grid Index, which is simply that, an index of grid patterns, presumably developed into some sort of taxonomy, but certainly provided with vector format data files, for reuse.
Nicolai is a master of distillation. At least some of the grid forms in his book are likely to have been seen in designs dating back centuries or millenia (for instance the arabic hexagonal tile forms on the open-page photo below). However, Carsten here refines such designs to fine black lines on white, colours left for the viewers’ mind to imagine (or not). And he includes the data output of whatever (mathematical and/or empirical) process he used to create them - adding the vector files of all grids so that “with simple superimposings you can create new ones”.
In his sound works, and arguably, his entire aesthetic, Nicolai simplifies, filters, before adding a different complexity. His audiovisuals are distilled to sine-tones, filtered noise, black and white, greyscale, and simple forms of lines or points before complexity is re-introduced in the time-space structure and arrangement of such basic elements. Nicolai even suggests this as a fundamental tenet - “Everyone develops his own strategies to filter or ignore specific stuff”. A refined aesthetic of synthesis via analysis.
The book reminds me somewhat of a book I have somewhere in storage - “
Rhythmusic. Lines and Stripes in Variations” by
Wolfgang Hageney, which contains pages of striped patterns in black and white, primarily intended I recall, for fabric designers. The apparent simplicity, developed into simultaneous repetition and variation, is intriguing and enticing.
Grid Index
Author: Carsten Nicolai
Language: English
Release: May 2009
Price: € 39,90 / $ 60,00 / £ 35,00
Format: 18,5 x 23 cm
Features: 320 pages, full colour, hardcover, incl. CD-ROM
ISBN: 978-3-89955-241-6
Grid Index is the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems. Based upon years of research, artist and musician Carsten Nicolai has discovered and unlocked the visual code for visual systems into a systematic equation of grids and patterns. The accompanying CD contains all of the grids and patterns featured in the publication from the simplest grids made up entirely of squares to the most complex irregular ones with infinitely unpredictable patterns of growth, as editable vector graphic data files. Use it to map out the underlying grids of any image or form and to create recurring geometrical grids in graphic design - an essential reference for designers, visual artists, architects, researchers and mathematicians.
Posted in audiovisual, book | No Comments »