Digital Craft Minor 4th Year: Cybernetics

Project 1: Critical Making exercise

Reimagine an existing technology or platform using the provided sets of cards. For this first project, I grouped up with Tutu, Thijs and Naima and we picked three random cards each from different category.

Inspiration

Our starting point

Prototype

Project 2: Cybernetic Prosthetics

First Testing

Making Prototype

Final Result

Aquatic Acoustic

Video Link : https://vimeo.com/292687674

Project 3: From Devices to systems

Cassette recorder to Electromagnetic noise detector

Final Project (RESEARCH DOCUMENT)

question-process-experiments-reflection-conclusions

Introduction

(tell us about yourself and your practice)

I take art as a mode of communication, which shows the exploration of my interests and thoughts. I try to capture how I am conscious with my surroundings and intrigue the audiences to question their own. I have been experimenting with different media, mainly photography, text, and sculpture, and came to the new media technology facing the fact that it is an inevitable yet fascinating medium. In spite of my fascination to technology, I could not develop my skillset in this field due to my broad interests. Therefore I chose Digital Craft as Minor to limit myself to actually work in certain context. I believe limitation gives you even more freedom and focusing on one media and deepening is very important. As an artist, you should be able to utilise any medium which is the most suitable to your works. The immersive effect of new media technology is very powerful. I wanted to know what media technologies are out there nowadays and what kind of topics are being discussed at the moment. I also like the concept of combining digital and analogue, respecting the value of craftmanship. I appreciate physicality in art form, and working with spatial functionality enables you to create a zone with the artwork and give an immersive effect on audiences.

Position Paper_H Jung

What is your craft? (define your discipline, method or approach) What are the tools and media of your craft? What are the borders of this practice? (what new media technologies have arisen / what is its future of the field)) Connect to a historical discourse and give concrete examples of contemporary practitioners Define your position of your practice in relation to newer technologies.

Abstract/Research Question

(in 250 words or less, explain the essence of your research project) (why is this worth pursuing? explain the urgency of your project)

For me, one of my all time interest was sound, so I wanted to commit myself to work with sound for this semester. I have been always fascinated by weird noise and sound, and dreaming of producing electronic music at some point in my life. However, I could not really specify which aspect of sound I was intrigued before. Therefore I decided to something has to do with sound for the exercises. In exercise 2, as a group, we made a device to experience being underwater using water as a sound filter. In exercise 3, I dissembled a tape player to understand more about sound devices. I figured out that a tape head inside the tape play reads the information on the tape so without any tape facing on the tape head, I could hear the noise of electromagnetic field when it was close to magnetic. From exercise 2 and 3, I dragged my research topic as our perception to sound around us. I was interested in the hypnotising and meditating effect of sound since it brings us to another state of mind. I also wanted to define what is the border between sound art and music. Therefore, my research question became “How do we perceive sound around us? How do we find it meaningful?”

Research Approach

(how do you define and design your research? what activities/approaches/methods will you pursue while conducting your research?) For this project I approached research as by doing/experimenting. At the beginning of the project, I still did not know which aspect of my research topic I would dive into and why I was interested in it. Therefore I limited myself within the theme "sound" and try to explore as I came across with something.

Inspiration/Reference

(what texts will/can support this investigation?)

When I was researching to figure out on which aspect of sound I could work, I came across with several musicians and artists inspired me. First one is 'Caterina Barbieri'. She is a musician originally trained with classic guitar. She wrote a dissertation about Indian music, subtract composition, repetition, minimalism in music.

Pierre Schaeffer (Musique Concrete, Found Sound). When I tried to turn the environmental sound to repetitive beat music, the term 'found sound' brought him to me.

Dick Raaijmakers (Phono-kinetic object)

Tomoko Sauvage (sound installation/performance) Tomoko Sauvage, Japanese musician and artist active since mid 2000’s, investigates the sculpturality of sound and improvisation in relation to the environment. Mainly known for a musical / visual research about ‘natural synthesizer’ of her invention, composed with diverse fluid, bowls, ceramic, light and underwater amplification, Sauvage’s approach is attached to questions of alchemy, meditation and balance between hazard and mastery. Under the form of performances, installations and musical compositions, her work is regularly presented in Europe, Asia and America. For more than ten years, Tomoko Sauvage has been investigating the sound and visual properties of water in different states, as well as those of ceramics, combined with electronics. China bowls of different sizes, filled with water and amplified via hydrophones (underwater microphones), waterbowls is a kind of natural synthesizer that generates fluid timbre using waves, drops and bubbles. These recipients resonate and also produce subaquatic feedback, an acoustic phenomenon that requires fine tuning depending on the amount of water, a subtle volume control and interaction with the acoustic space. Through primordial materials and playful gestures, Tomoko Sauvage searches for a fragile balance between randomness and discipline, chaos and order.

Experiments/Process

I tried several things to be ended up with my final process. First I tried to make an analogue sound filter for the space. Second, I wanted to explore algorithmic composition with coding and combined with coded visual such as Processing. In the end, I decided to make an interface/installation.

Contact Microphone

As an extension from the second project, I wanted to try out if the contact underwater microphone would work as a water filter in our surroundings. I decided to make a hydrophone myself with two piezo elements and xlr mic cable. https://www.instructables.com/id/Balanced-piezo-contact-microphones/
Resonator https://www.macprovideo.com/article/ableton-live/have-fun-with-resonators-in-ableton-live/

Algorithmic Composition, Synthesis_SuperCollider

SuperCollider https://supercollider.github.io/
Algorave https://algorave.com/

Ableton, Found sound

So I decided to make a composition with Ableton. I was interested in found sound, and decided to use them as the musical source. Nowadays we are living in the age of mechanical reproduction and it somehow changed our perspective on beauty. Whenever I walk down the streets, I hear the noise of construction works such as drills, banging hammers that become repetitive in my head and suddenly become a rhythm and then music. First I did some field recordings and manipulated them in DAW Ableton. I warped, cropped the sound and put audio effects to recreate the sound. I put the recorded found sounds in the drum rack to use each elements as a percussion sound. I think pattern and repetition are what makes noises and sound into music. I decided to make a drum machine interface where audiences can create their own beat from the found sounds. I can use touchOSC application as a MIDI controller with an iPad. Then I wanted to visualise the patterns and repetition of the beats. I wanted to visualise it as a movement using motors. I thought this way of creating optical kinetic installation would be effective to show the mesmerising effect of the repetition of the patterns.

Electronics

Servo motor
Adafruit 16 servo shield https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-16-channel-pwm-slash-servo-shield/overview Power Source

OSC

Open Sound Control (OSC) is a protocol for networking sound synthesisers, computers, and other multimedia devices for purposes such as musical performance or show control. OSC's advantages include interoperability, accuracy, flexibility and enhanced organisation and documentation. With the Ableton Connection Kit (https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/connection-kit/), it is easy to control motors, LED, etc via Arduino. However, since I am planning to use 12 servo motors and using a shield for Arduino, the digital outputs have been changed. So Ableton could not read the shield. I asked Mike in interaction station for a help, and he suggested me to send OSC to Processing and connect it to Arduino.

Material exploration

Metal Sheet (Steel)

Wire

Found/Scrap object

colour points

Moving creature

Insights from Experimentation

(what have you pulled from your hands on practice based research?)

Realised work

(what did you actually make)

Reflection/Final Conclusion

(what was the point? what do you take away?)

Questions for the presentation

Image 1: What did you make? (Show one image of your semester work that was the most inspiring)

Image 2: What did you miss? (What do you to connect to, bring in, or explore that is not covered by the curriculum)

Image 3: What is your topic of interest? (Explain though a visual what area you wish to further explore)

Image 4: What is your medium? (Explain what materials and tools you wish to use)

Image 5: What is your question? (Try to formulate one (preliminary research) question that will guide your investigation)

Bibliography

(what did you reference in this text (other texts, images, films, exhibitions)? Remember to use proper in-text citing!!!!!!!!!!

Klankvorm @V2
The Rest is Noise: Alva Noto
Instrument Make Play @Worm