Research

My Background

The art projects I have produced over the past 10 years vary in medium, but reside within the digital and electronic genre. The results of this work have become performances, exhibitions, recorded audio works, or live Internet events. This wide experience gives me an interesting vantage point in our current culture of convergence of media on the Internet and other platforms. I feel that these notions of convergent and integrated media should be used as lens to further understand and interpret our present digital culture.

The following describes my present and future interests in research using creative technologies. Elements of interactivity overlay many areas of my work, from building software interfaces, live media performance systems or constructing software algorithms to manipulating imagery in the studio. Interaction is an integral part of my artistic process, and seeking ways to facilitate that interactivity is a focus of my research.

Over the years, a majority of my work has been sound and video and, for the most part, composed using MAX/MSP/Jitter (an object-oriented multi-media programming environment), Python programming language, and Blender 3D. In developing these projects, I have explored the construction of real-time interactive media instruments for myself and others interested in using computers as performance instruments or interactive installations. This experience has developed my knowledge of building user interfaces and individual interaction with computers in live situations. This combinatorial approach to media and technology in my art insists a convergence of these types into new hybrid forms.

Media theorist Lev Manovich relates these ideas further in the following passage from “Language of New Media”.

In semiotic terms, the computer interface acts as a code which carries
cultural messages in a variety of media. When you use the Internet, everything
you access — texts, music, video, navigable spaces — passes through the
interface of the browser and then, in its turn, the interface of the OS. In cultural
communication, a code is rarely simply a neutral transport mechanism; usually it
affects the messages transmitted with its help.

-Lev Manovich-“Language of New Media”

These “codes” that Manovich describes are the integral part that I am interested in harnessing and I add one notion to this concept. The “code” coming from human interaction is what gives life to these projects.

Philips Design/General Motors

In 2006, I worked with a team of designers at Philips Design and General Motors to develop a prototypical system to look at new experiences inside cars. We were given the task of developing a prototype that had all of the “bells and whistles” so Philips and General Motors could decide what and how they wanted to implement in future cars. Our goal was to implement an interactive storyboard that was created by Philips Design and General Motors. Our team built and developed simulations that then were installed in a car.

Our team of consultants and Philips Design employees worked together over one week to develop the entire prototype, each individual taking on a unique role while contributing to the final project. My role in the design was to create the interactive brain of the project. In other words, I had to find the best way to connect the sensors that noticed the door opening, the ignition switch starting the car, or the music playing on the touch screen needed so it could be automated or run in sequences during the demonstration. My research focused on interactive software design, physical computing (Arduino, Teleo) and sensor installation. Other team members created a internal WIFI system for the car that allowed the driver to use the internet when driving at slower speeds. The prototype included abilities to control music, make hands free cell phone calls, surf the Internet, and personalize the internal lighting in the passenger area.

After the research and design phase was completed, the team successfully installed the interactive prototype in a Chevrolet HHR at the General Motors Prototype Lab in Warren, MI. The General Motors Vice President of Operations participated in the first demonstration of the project. Some of their reactions to the project are below.

• Jim Queen (Vice President, Global Engineering)
“This was the most worthwhile hour of my time spent at any presentation in my entire GM career.”
“Fantastic, Fantastic, Fantastic, this will see the light of day!”

• Dave Rand (Executive Director of Interiors)
“Impressive and sensational, really amazing!”
“The whole team did an amazing job, you should be very proud.”

• Ed Welburn (Vice President, Global Design)
“This has huge potential – you have made technology approachable, and in a way that appeals to our traditional and non-traditional customer.”

Even though we received high recognition on this project, General Motors has not yet pursued the project further.

3D breath

My long-standing interest in personal connections to media through interactive devices stimulated research that culminated in two related works. This research investigated various means of using the breath, a basic human function, to interact with or control a system. My reasons for focusing on control reside in two areas. First, the systems and controls that I have developed help me better understand personal interaction with media. Second, this work also rides the fascinating edge of Human-Computer interface development research and issues discussed in cognitive science.

In the spring of 2002, I created and performed a video work that allowed me to manipulate a video image with the increase and decrease of my breath into a microphone. In order for this to work successfully, I experimented with different types of microphones and created a series of software algorithms. This study helped interpret the electrical audio signal from the microphone into usable data. The data then could be translated within my algorithm to manipulate video information and display a connection between the microphone input and the video the is shown on the screen. Coming back to the notion of convergence that was describe earlier , this project directly shows how I combine different media types to create a new, converged, idea.

I have returned to this project, but rather than video manipulation, I am creating a system to control 3 dimensional objects in a computer space. In this version of the piece, I am using the microphone signal to manipulate the 3D objects. The process for this version is similar, except that now I have more ability to create more complex movements. Also, I am using the Blender game engine, which is part of the Blender 3D modeling and animation program. I chose this software because I am familiar with the program and Python scripts can easily be developed to assist the translating of the audio data.

This is the first time I have ever used a game engine and my projects and as I experiment further, there are many more possibilities with this type of system.

This project is in development at the moment but I see two types of works that could come out of the research. The first will be a real-time interactive gallery installation and the second will be a live interactive media performance.

Resonations Series

Recently, I decided to experiment with work outside of time-based media, and presented some of my work as still frames instead of videos on screen.

The process of creating these still images began in 2004, while I was an artist in residence at Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY. During my week there, I explored different ways to connect video and sound and came across a technique that I then worked on for the majority of my residency time. The equipment that I used was handmade for this space and makes it one of the few places in the world where the pieces that I made could be created.

To generate the video, I connected a low voltage electrical signal from an audio synthesizer (+ or – 5 volts) to the input of a video signal generator. The result created a series of undulating black and white bands on the screen. I then used another piece of equipment that was connected to the output of the video signal generator to shift the color values. The footage for “Resonations” was created as a studio performance and recorded to video tape. I selected frames from these video tapes and printed them as archival photo prints.
The method that I describe here was one that reveals a bit of the exploratory nature of my artistic process. Since I was not sure of the results in the early stages of the project, I used “trial and error” and considered the errors that were generated equally to what I first thought was a success. This allowed me to see new possibilities with these experiments without worrying about the outcome. I also documented six hours of video from this work that I used for the prints.

Net-based performance

I am interested in the use of low-cost Internet media streaming for performance and installation. I find that this medium is interesting because it expands the performer’s stage to any possible location. I could be performing sound and video and streaming it out to another collaborator who then could manipulate this media in his location and send it to the final performance location which may be in another distant location. I have collaborated on performances at the Overgaden Sound Art Festival in Denmark, NOMUSIC festival, and the Kunstradio production, “Reinventing Radio” which aired at the 2004 Ars Electronica Festival in Vienna, Austria. Presently, I am working on a project called “Simultaneous Translation” which streamed its first performance in December 2004. Technically speaking, to do these network-based performances, I use a piece of software called Nicecast, written by Rogue Ameoba. This software allows us to send a MP3 quality stream to over the internet, via Icecast server. Then each performer could bring in each other’s media stream and then send it out again. One person in the group also would send out a stream to another location that would then Quicktime streaming server. I am also interested in creating this as a video and sound installation for a gallery and the Internet.

In conclusion, my projects in various media show how my method of experimenting with human interaction, be it either with myself experimenting in the studio or creating installations that use audience interaction, influence my development as an artist, and media researcher.

But there is one thing we can be sure of. We are witnessing the emergence of a new cultural meta-language, something which will be at least as significant as the printed word and cinema before it.

-Lev Manovich-“Language of New Media”

In this “emergence” I see my work evolving into multiple media forms that consider the all elements of digital media as tools to express my ideas in new convergent ways.