AVLAB 1.0 - List of selected projects

Estación Pirata (Pirate Station)

by Rosa Apablaza Valenzuela (Chile)

Estación pirata (Pirate Station) comprises the development of research on pirate radios-- temporary, ephemeral, nomadic, illegal and clandestine— heard or functioning in the city of Madrid or its surrounding areas, through building a portable homemade radio station to experiment with picking up and transmitting radio signals. Audio, photo and video recordings will be made of the entire process to be used subsequently to make a sound and video installation of the process. In principle, the aim is to build an analog radio station, but that will depend on the technical possibilities and tools that arise during the workshop. There is also the possibility of implementing a digital radio or an analog-digital one, provided that signals can be picked up from various pirate radios at work in the city. It may not be necessary to build a radio station but rather to use and adapt one that has already been built.

Pulverización 3.0 -Bacteria electrónica programable

by Diego Javier Alberti (Argentina)

A sound project consisting of producing interactive sound installations that invite reflection on our habitual sound environment. Pulverización is based on the exploration of the surrounding sound spectrum, raising awareness and “limited listening” to those sounds that surround us in our everyday life. This is the third Pulverización workshop and our challenge is to expand limits related to the sources producing those sounds and work directly with radio-electric space, the process I had to in an original way to produce new sounds, never heard before, unique and unrepeatable.

Our aim is to develop electronic “bacteria” able to process and recycle electronic elements to achieve other new ones: the bacteria consist of eight FM radios and 40 speakers connected to a central system. The radios are the entrance point to the system, taking up radiophonic signals from various local stations at a given moment and submit them to granular processing. Granular synthesis is a process through which new sounds are obtained based on very small fragments of other sounds reproduced as a continuous sequence. The central system consists of an audio matrix able to connect the radios with any of the 40 speakers. This central system has a microcontroller handled by the matrix that produces organized reproduction sequences; that is, each moment this “brain”, based on an artificial intelligence algorithm, takes fragments of sound from the radios and sequentially distributes them among the speakers at a speed that turns the resulting sound into a new, unrepeatable sound. A sort of sound environment, a granular cloud.

Vídeo para invidentes (Video for the Blind)

by Fernando Baena y Beatriz Caravaggio (Spain)

The incorporation of the blind into audiovisual culture is a right that the blind are demanding increasingly. It is a matter of questioning the power of description and dialogue as a means of representing images and actions and, through them, concepts and feelings. Misunderstandings, implications, the traps of language, the tricks of images… editing. The result will be a documentary, experimental video about the relation of blind people to audiovisual products. We are planning to use this workshop is the first stage of research, using the resources of sound art and live cinema. The work will require prior documentation that explores technological solutions offered to date and the way the audiovisual industry has addressed this issue. Field work will also be necessary among blind people to research expectations and wishes.

As a foundation for the work, we will contribute recordings made previously with five blind people. This material will be used to start work with live cinema and sound art software, which will generate new images and sounds to contribute to the project. The final version will contain the most appropriate technological solutions, such as audio-description, that enable the blind to participate in the creation and enjoyment of this video.

Sangoma

by James Webb (South Africa)

This work can be created with 2-8 audio speakers, 2 CD players and assorted electrical lighting and cabling. Its specific visual installation can be determined site-specifically at the venue, and this would be a good collaborative element of the project, as the work could function as a large-scale installation piece or a series of small interventionist pieces scattered throughout the venue and the local environment, playing off the animist traditions that the Sangoma is contextually situated in.

W_space... *

by Tom Tlalim y Paola Tognazzi (Holland/Israel/Italy)

It is an musical instrument based on a method which seeks to promote awareness of the human body as a powerful technological tool, which retains an innate capability to handle complex and elaborate informations.

One of the objectives in the development of W_space... is to allow learning practices to emerge, starting from direct and immediate results, which encourage the user to play with the instrument, to deeper, more elaborate, 'hidden' possibilities, achieved when learning the instrument / body.

It's a hands on project to develop a musical instrument that cuts away the distance between the human body and technological tools. The instrument become a body extention and makes the body more aware of its states of being.

Sprocket

by Bruno Vianna y Maíra Sala (Brazil / Spain)

A physical interface for live cinema editing. It was designed for movie theaters, for the editing and manipulation of narrative films, but it can be adapted for other uses. The idea for the tool came from the necessity to develop a specific editing environment for live cinema, different from the VJ softwares available today, which didn’t attend some of our requirements for narrative movies.

The main motivation for the project is the non-linear film Ressaca, by Brazilian filmmaker Bruno Vianna. This fiction feature film will be shot in July in Rio, thanks to the sponsorship of Instituto Oi Futuro (http://www.oifuturo.org.br). After the shoot, the prototype interface will need to be upgraded to a working version, that can manage the amount of footage available (more than 120 minutes of edited sequences), besides visual effects such as slow motion and cross-fades.

The whole project was developed as an open-source / open-hardware tool, and was based on some of the technology created for the Reactable project (http://reactable.iua.upf.edu/), thanks to the collaboration of their developers, besides Pompeu Fabra University and Hangar art center, in Barcelona. The whole code is published under open source licenses and will naturally continue to be after the developments at the Medialab. The footage will be released on the web, using p2p networks, under a Creative Commons license, as with Vianna's first feature, Cafuné (http://icommons.org/articles/cafune-breaking-the-limits-for-open-business-models).

Bri 2.0 *

by Marcel Bilurbina Camps y Raúl Díaz Poblete (Spain)

An interactive audiovisual system based on a set of “bris” that serve as a physical interface between the user and the environment. A “bri” is a rod with a luminous tip; its name is derived from its similarity to a brizna de hierba, a blade of grass. It forms the basic cell of the interactive system. That system is made up of 37 bris, organized in a hexagonal reticle, forming a self-referential, independent system, organized as a network, alluding to the concept of a system suggested by N. Luhmann and based on the organization of living beings.

The user's interaction with the system of bris creates a set of internal processes in the system (manifested and transmitted through light and movement) that modify the external environment through sound generation. Therefore, the system of bris is a visual system (or work) in its own right, and also an instrument or interface for the sound modification of space.

Waves to Waves to Waves

by Damian Stewart y Chris Sugrue (New Zealand / USA)

A performance driven by transformations of electromagnetic data into sound and image. Real-time transmissions of varying frequencies become source for sound textures that are in turn used to alter, manipulate and animate video footage of the antennae and sensing devices that grow from our cities' rooftops.

In a performance for live electromagnetic sound sniffing equipment and digitally manipulated video, we explore relationships between powerful but silent electromagnetic communication, and the delicate but vital gardens of sensing equipment that sprout from the rooftops of our cities, necessary for this communication to exist.

Above our homes and our studios, the rooftops of city buildings sprout fields of sensing devices, silently probing the air for the invisible and inaudible electromagnetic communications that make up an ever-growing portion of our lives. Yet as we cannot ourselves directly sense the airwaves to which these devices listen, we are often unconscious to these growths as entities in themselves. Our architecture does not incorporate them into its designs, leaving them to be installed by hand, haphazard; to the conscious eye, the skyline of each urban centre is blessed with a local, unique style of visual embellishment, but too often the eye is unconscious.

In this performance we make perceptible this electromagnetic clutter by means both direct and indirect, bringing about a new consciousness of the electromagnetic environment through sound; with video manipulations derived from the resulting sound we bring about a transformation in consciousness of the visual clutter that always accompanies the invisible - the fields of aerials, dishes, and communications technology, that is both its cause and its result.

Avis Data

by Kepa Landa Maritorena (Spain)

This project aims to develop a soundscape based on birdsong that alters in real time, or almost real time, according to the air quality analysis data obtained hourly from the Madrid “Air Quality Control Network”, which invites us to reflect on the environment we live in.

Given that in today’s world, sensors allow us to “see” beyond the scope of our senses, this project intends to develop a representation based on that “way of seeing”, which authors including Roy Ascott have called “cyberception”. It will translate numerical data into dynamic sound representations that will allow us to become aware of and reflect on the environment we live in. It especially aims to reinforce a systemic view of our lives, as suggested by Fritjop Capra, in which our actions at the local level have global or glocal repercussions: "Think globally, act locally".

This project aims to combine the parameters of our technological systems and metaphorically alter the behaviour of our “natural environment”, represented by birdsongs from various European forests (were the project presented on a different continent, the local birds would be included). Thus, a sound representation will be developed, a soundscape that alters in alters in real time, or almost real time, according to air quality analysis data, which invites us to reflect on the environment we live in.

 

MadreNoise - a self generator audiovisual system

by Ricardo Augusto P. (Brazil)

*For personal reasons this project will not be developed during the workshop*

MadreNoise is an application based in puredata patches to produce self generated audiovisual products. Including some initial parameters, is possible to build advanced and complex creative systems using simple modules. In really MadreNoise is a easy-to-use interface to produce audiovisual using puredata potential.

The principal idea of the MadreNoise is to simplify and optimize the use of puredata to create audiovisual systems. With the module ideia, is possible to be things like video players, video mixers and video output inside small boxes (abstractions in puredata language), ready to be used, without the needed of recreate your tools each time than you start a new project. the ideia is research how to create a library of abstractions ready to be used in various operating systems (Mac, linux and windows).

 

* Project selected for the sound project showcase of the EXPerimentaclub'08 Festival