My Interactive Music final project was called “Noon to Night”. First, a special thanks to Brandon Kader as the performer in this video. Our assignment suggested making a piece and instrument that would be played by someone other than ourselves, and I greatly appreciate Brandon’s performance.
Noon to Night is an audio visual performance, instrument, and proof of concept. At it’s heart, it is a timelapse of the ITP floor on April 24th, 2017. I programmed a Max MSP patch to take photos and record one second of audio every 15 seconds. At the end, I had enough content to cover noon to night.
Once I had my media, I programmed the performance interface in Javascript using p5.js and tone.js. A visual clock interface is controlled by dragging the mouse right or left. Dragging to the right increases the time, while dragging to the left turns the clock back. The second works on it’s own. For the current minute, four recordings play in sequence: the second captured at 0 seconds, at 15 seconds, at 30 seconds, and at 45 seconds. The corresponding sound and captured photo is triggered when the second hand is in each position.
There is a delay effect on the audio. The mouse position at the top of the screen increases the delay time, while at the bottom the delay time approaches zero. This gives an aspect of live performability and gesture that can be controlled in real time.
The approach from an instrument aspect is to create something that is casual and almost “browsing” in nature. When turned on, it makes noise and visuals on it’s own. However, the act of scrubbing and analyzing the time and things of interest in the frames and audio snippets, creates a different kind of performative engagement. This process of discovery isn’t precise, however. You cannot type in specific times, and the sensitivity of the mouse itself doesn’t lend itself to precision. This is to add more discovering into the use of the instrument. While you might want to know what was happening at 6:00PM exactly, there could be things of more interest at 5:59PM or 6:02PM that you would not have otherwise entered in by typing.
The conceptual approach is that of thinking of an entire space, time, or group of people as an “instrument”. Giving a set chunk of time to use as a tool to be manipulated and explored breaks our normal experience of time. But when treated like a block to be flipped, tapped and rubbed in the manner of an instrument, this span of time shows us something we may not appreciate under normal circumstances. Moments that might have been not noticed or forgotten, and more general, bigger picture sentiments of what it is like to be in this place with these people.
When made into an instrument, this allows someone to have their own process of discovery, finding their own individual memories or broader impressions. The breaking of time is a tool for the user, for them to gain a different perspective on a set time, place, and group of people.
My final project for Readymades was a piece called “My Phone Your Phone”. This is an interactive installation that requires two users to simultaneously connect to a local web server on their phones and navigate to a web page. This page offers a few variations on simplistic animations that feature the words: My Phone Your Phone Mine Ours.
There are two chairs on either side of the installation. At each seat there is a tablet displaying the following instructions:
Instructions screenshot
Once two users are detected, the illuminated color at the center of the installation will begin to shift. Slowly, the table space in front of each seat will be illuminated with a projected video feed. A small wire camera is one of the features on each side of table, and what it sees is being projected onto the table.
The table itself is covered in a bedsheet. I chose a sheet textured in a manner conspicuous as a piece of bedding specifically as opposed to cloth that might be misconstrued as a neutral background. The tablets are cradled in matching pillow covers. The rest of the table includes: a triangle and circle shaped mirror, an iridescent see through acrylic holder around which the wired cameras are wrapped, a pile of mirrored letters that have all the letters from “MY PHONE YOUR PHONE” and their negative spaces, and a two foot long acrylic mirror with the phrase “MY PHONE YOUR PHONE” etched onto the mirror face.
In the middle is a frame, made from mirrored acrylic. It is three feet high, in a “portrait” orientation, and its base is under the sheets, seemingly emerging from them. At the base of this large mirrored frame is a pillow. Under this pillow and under the sheets is the lighting system.
The technical setup involved a machine running Max MSP. This machine is connected to an Arduino that controls a strip of neopixel RGB LED lights. The wire cameras are USB devices, brought into the Max patch and mapped/positioned onto the table surface using the cornerpin object. Mira frame objects are places over the animated images, composed of mutlisliders and text objects. Miraweb allows these animations to be accessed by users of the installation, and also keeps track of how many users are connected. Once two users are detected, the video feeds of the USB cameras are faded in and the lighting of the installation changes. Once less than two users are detected, the feed fades out and then the light returns to its ambient resting state.
This project is the end result of two previous approaches. Initially, I had been considering the concept of your phone as a sexual object. I word this specifically as *your* phone, because I didn’t want to simply say that “phones are sexual objects”. The theme I wanted to stick to throughout each incarnation of this project was that the readymade object is *your* phone. The mass produced object that I wish the audience to consider is the one that they call their own, which will be carried away from the piece itself.
A phone can be literally sexual in multiple ways: sexting, a repository of sexual images of ourselves and our lovers, a way to communicate with lovers, a way to find lovers, a way to consume pornography. But it has general descriptors of a sexual characteristics, as well. An object that is private, an object that you may hesitate to arbitrarily hand to a stranger, the thing in your pants that has your personal flora all over it, a method of connecting you to those you love, a voyeuristic venue, an exhibitionist venue, a kind of addiction, an object of self identity and self pleasure that can involve others to varying degrees.
In play testing different iterations of the build, there were plenty of good lessons learned on technical hurdles and practical approaches to user interaction for artistic ends. Having discussions and critique with the class, I found myself either going far too obvious in sexual metaphor and imagery, or over-correcting with something more subtle and perhaps losing the message. But it was this last concept that stuck with me: an object of self identity and self pleasure that can involve others to varying degrees.
I had considered installations that would hopefully guide two people to use their cellphones to act in concert with each other, but leaving a sort of ambiguity as a space for discussion between the participants as to what they should be doing. This, in my mind perhaps might create a natural consent exercise: two people negotiating and collaborating together for mutual satisfaction, or “making something beautiful together”.
But after being prompted to keep thinking about what the piece is really about, I wondered if my take was perhaps a view of 20th century-era Internet utopianism: the network as inherently collaborative, the intrinsic “togetherness” of networked machines as a deterministic march towards a future that arcs towards a progressive, interdependent future.
However in the 21st century, as a cellphone society we aren’t all uniformly “making something beautiful together” in line with these aspirations. Why should a piece about cellphones indicate otherwise? Though, I’m reticent to throw my viewpoint into full reverse. Transcendentalist redux, 2017 Black Mirror-cyberpunk rehash, and simple pop culture contrarianism lacks a sense of complexity and subtlety I believe the situation requires. Common prescriptions for our cultural cellphone ailments and fantastic predictions from Silicon Valley’s 1990 crystal ball both share a tendency to fix in place what a cellphone is used for, what they do to us and why we want to use them.
Then the meditation that resonated with me is: what a cellphone is for? And what is my cellphone about? And yours?
Is a cellphone used more to view others? Or transmit images of the receiver? In either case, are the underlying reasons selfish or communitarian?
Is a cellphone a selfie machine? A monitoring device? A library card to an electronic library of Alexandria? An escapist distraction?
Is a cellphone a mirror or a frame?
The reductive answer to these questions is that each person is different and uses their cellphone for their own reasons, even if those reasons may be unconsidered. And furthermore, may oscillate for any given user multiple times throughout the day.
In abstracting this concept, I decided to make a physical interpretation of a cell phone. A frame that is also a mirror that sits between you and another person. I have been describing it as a deconstruction of a cell phone that attempts to create a metaphorical play space.
The different elements laid out in front of the participant can be categorized in themes of cell phone usage. Viewing of the self, through mirrors. Viewing of another and their activity, through a frame. A tool to monitor, through a controllable camera. A place to play, using all items to create entertaining images with the camera.
Small, charm-like letters viewed through the camera can be thought of in a context of written text communication shared via screens. But also because they can be freely re-arranged, perhaps a consideration of online re-mix culture. Certain aspects such as this only occurred to me until after I had fabricated certain parts, played with the piece myself, and invited others to do the same.
This is in line with a broader goal that I have with this piece. I don’t want to say explicitly: the small letters are a metaphor for online remix culture, and thus this must be properly communicated to the audience.
I had certain ideas that were fixed, like the central mirror frame and your cellphones in the middle. But my hope was to continually consider a general “cellphone-ness” and imbue all of my artistic decisions with this attitude as a method of creation. If I kept in this mental mode, I hoped to not only create the metaphors I intended, but also have other relevant metaphors emerge. For example, during fabrication I was struck by the realization: how can I talk about cell phones and not have a text element in the piece? Having a pile of laser cut letters around while working on other things, fellow students were happy to play with them. Names, swears, nonsense gibberish and geometric patterns came and went with delight. Remixing as a theme then occurred to me.
And in this spirit, I wanted the end piece to have a playful quality with emergent themes. If people use cell phones in their own way, they should use the piece in their own way as well. To some, there may be more themes of reflection and perhaps narcissism. To others, there may be a simple entertainment of camera manipulation; a crazy, shiny, digital nonsense world for two. I wanted to see if themes could emerge because of a commitment to the metaphor, where the topic of the piece isn’t just the subject but also the way in which the piece should be created.
The only necessary thematic anchor, the phone of the audience, is placed in the center of the piece. My hope was to make it almost altar-like, yet also intimate, two phones resting on a glowing pillow surrounded by soft sheets in the middle of everything. If this can be the literal and metaphorical center of the piece, hopefully all meditations and ruminations on the piece and what is happening can be placed in the phone context.
My blue sky scenario for this piece would be to have someone to understand the cell phone context, engage in meditation on that theme, and share a metaphor had not occurred to me but still resonates completely.
I’m not sure if I have fully achieved my goals in these conceptual regards, though. Play testing this piece will be very important in terms of refinements and changes. But I am hopeful, as many things that I have noticed and have been called out to me are simple changes: swapping the projection feed positions, changing the size of the table, removal of certain unnecessary features, and adding more explicit cell phone related indicators to more successfully communicate the theme.
It had been a long journey. A long life, really. There was plenty of time ahead, but there was no getting around the “before” and “after” that so clearly marked this plastic bag’s existence. Before the ocean and after.
Plastic bag didn’t remember much of being born or it’s earliest days. Who does, really? But the first memory of being pulled and fully exposed to bright light and bare air would always stick with the plastic bag. Previously stacked nearly two dimensionally flat against its brethren, it hadn’t been used to the world or much of its three dimensions. And all of a sudden, hands, weight, swinging, knocking. It had held some cans, vegetables, snacks and a receipt. It was one of the few bags that had more than one use. It had been repurposed to transport left overs before being thrown into the trash. In its first trash home, it shared some time next to those left overs. There were some other bags, scraps of food, napkins, twist ties, rubber bands and coffee stirrers.
It’s life space had collapsed again, however not in the orderly 2d dimensional sheets of its earlier life. It was now cramped in three dimensions. And it was also handled, but not the same way. A bag within a bigger bag, in a pile of bigger bags. Moved in a bin, a box, a truck, a ship. Motion was vague, detectable but far off. Muted tones and slight jostles marked legs of the journey that the bag could not see.
Too many times to count. And it didn’t matter, really. Most of it was simply dark and small. The bag didn’t mind. There was something to like about certain spaces, certain trash friends that would come and go.
But then there was the ocean. There was brightness and darkness. A free floating three dimensions but the reassuring pressure of the water surrounding it. And the fellow bags. The tides, their weight, the complicated liquid dynamics, all conspired to bring the bags together. Physics itself almost seemed to bend to make sure that the flock of bags would be together, slowly and luxuriously swimming in the middle of a vast ocean.
“Do you remember the hands?” they would ask each other, reminiscing. Sometimes they would twist into each other and play games. Other times they would simply be silent, and sway with the undulating current. But they were never mad or sad. They enjoyed sharing the memories as much as sharing the present. And when, occasionally, a bag or two peeled off from the pack, they were always happy and would wish each other good travels. “Goodbye! Thank you for everything! Tell them all about us here in the ocean!” they would yell as the departing bags approached the horizon.
There was before the ocean and after the ocean. Plastic bag liked the ocean very, very much.
For my assignment I want to attempt a “serene plastic bag”, (and yes, attempt to avoid the “American Beauty”-ization of the piece) with audio and visual elements that are calming. A collection of plastic bags, lit by blue light and slowly moving. The slow movements crinkle the bag, hopefully creating an ocean-like white noise.
The natural observation here is to recognize ecological damage posed by plastic bags in the ocean. I don’t want to confront this head on. In attempting to sanitize the aesthetics, I hope to create something that could be appealing on its own without any interpretation, but then can slowly reveal a grim reality upon noticing the details. Additionally, by creating a “fake” ocean, these bags avoid going into the actual ocean. Their (potential) beauty can serve an ecological purpose.
For our second Readymades assignment, we were tasked with creating a “Sound Object”. Our readymade was to be given a personality using only sound as an output. Max was to be used as the platform for making the sounds.
After thinking constantly about the idea of a readymade (and seeing them everywhere), I decided I wanted to use a wicker basket that I owned. The basket had some compelling properties to me. It is stiff, glazed with some kind of plastic to make it sturdy, and somewhat sharp at point. But it also looks natural, has a warm color, and I habitually will run my hands across it to make different noises.
Lately I’ve also been thinking about “mapping” sensory inputs in different ways that could produce interesting results. For example, consider that your ears are a certain distance apart from each other. Now imagine if you placed two microphones a similar distance apart. If you increased the distance between the microphones, you might be simulating what it was like to hear when your head was that much larger. If you reduced the distance to half, or a quarter, you might be perceptually “shrinking” yourself by that amount. I decided to use these thoughts as a prompt for my sound object assignment.
Multiple microphones are placed inside of the basket. These microphones feed into a multichannel audio I/O Max patch, which then processes and routes the microphone input to multiple speakers positioned outside of the basket and around the viewer. A pre-recorded recording of me rubbing, tapping, knocking, and playing with the basket loops until the microphones detect noise. When noise is detected, then the loop stops playing, and the microphones are positionally routed to the speakers.
My attempt is to prompt a meditation of a “box within a box” infinite regression. When making noise, you can become aware that something inside the box hears what is going on outside. You hear these noises, as they are positioned around and above you in a square configuration. While an out of body experience can also be a meaningful appreciation of the piece, my true attempt was to invoke the realization that the viewer is also in a box (the room). This box is also in a larger box, the building, etc, conceptually stretching outwards into the concept of space itself.
There were some technical challenges in creating the piece in regards to sourcing the proper microphones, speakers and calibrating the noise levels in the Max patch. I am happy with this first pass, however. If an opportunity to further refine the concept presents itself, I would have a solid knowledge base to build off of.
