Category Archives: Telematic Communication Models

The Song of Memories (#TiNaDCollective): the Questions of Data Visualization

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Telematic Cafe: The Song of Memories (#TiNaDCollective) on the final day 11 July 2018 (dis)playing the visualization of images and their sound version. The Project Space – Deakin University, Geelong.

Hello! Telematic Café has news – a project has been developed by joining This is Not a Drill Collective (25 June – 11 July 2018) at The Project Space – Deakin University in Geelong, AU. This is Not a Drill Collective was a generative model of creative production on site, exploring what collaboration might be, what art-making in a space, specifically in The Project Space, could be and what this process might bring for the gallery and artists-producers. This framework was a direct inspiration for Telematic Café: The Song of Memories (#TiNaDCollective) was bound to evolve as one of the voices within This is Not a Drill Collective.

The Song of Memories (#TiNaDCollective)

Team:
Marita Batna (concept, data collection and visualization)
Michael Morgan (video)

Huge thank you to This is Not a Drill Collective‘s curator Melissa Smith for the support throughout the project.  Special thanks to Toki Babai for encouragement and feedback.

Description. Strictly speaking, the aim was to turn visual data into sound. “Sonification” was developed on the basis of visualization – sequential order of social media images from the event, bearing its official hashtag #TiNaDCollective. I kept documenting and posting #TiNaDCollective posts (mainly Instagram) to contribute to the overall stream of #TiNaDCollective. The sequence of images reflects the history of the event in the order of the day of posting, and I have also inserted a few constructed images in the row to feature selected text from comments. For turning the images into sound I used AudioPaint (2002) tool – here is more information about the Audiopaint code developed by Nicolas Fournel. Each image was set to generate 2 sec sound which was then combined together and represented as a series of waveform to create the “song.”

Example of a #TiNaDCollective image (Instagram video still) and its sound clip waveform (2 sec).

Concept. This instance of Telematic Café contemplates data. Is there meaning in data? What makes it? Data visualization is a booming obsession of post-industrial informational economy. Visualization delivers value – whether it’s an academic research or a business. To use folklore – data visualization “tells stories.” What exactly are these stories? What is there in data? Is this representation as “big”, or – “small”, as the reality? What happens, when something happens? The Song of Memories is about these questions, alluding to the ideal – visualized data externalize the reality of a process.

Placed inside the event and inhabiting the eyes of participants and viewers the project imagines capability of poetic capturing, within a song, the very emergence of This is Not a Drill Collective, considering creative becomings, serendipitous connections, floating vibes, and interactions of artistic materialities, claiming to be “the song of memories.” An epistemological exercise of  knowledge capture. What always escapes documentation of collective practices is precisely the target of this venture.

Telematic Cafe in operation in the Project Space – Deakin University Waterfront, Geelong.

While the event resonates as a song in the sphere of truth, the visualization itself is a desire. The digital information produces – in this case – noise out of images and new visual data (waveform)- an abstraction and aesthetics. Meaning can be invoked by relations between visual and sound information. Waveform and sound has (new) perceptual value, and the act of translation from one media to the other aims to point out that there is something (the meaning) behind.

The representation is that of the sublime, which does not account for the qualities of moments of social time. Or, it’s the Reality with the capital R rather than reality with the small r.  In early days of computerized visualization in art (2002) new media theorist Lev Manovich pointed out: visualization is significant in itself, dealing with computation; it relates to thinking and perceiving abstraction by visual research, so it’s very nature is the tendency to be “anti-sublime” and data visualization art is able to affect through the beautiful [1].

What if the horizon of visualization aesthetics is social space, the space of production? Flattening out the world is inevitable, or should it be so? Media and social theorist Ned Rossiter discerned “new media empirics” where belief in quantification of everything characterized a perceptual strategy anchored via the linear relation between data and reality (say, technical analysis of real-time histograms in stock trading). The power of affect constitutes the gap between reality and simulations (which can be seen in correlation with the abstract and the beautiful – or noise); visualizing data reduces the complex field of forces – a much larger web of relations that might be at play. To go beyond representation one needs to admit the process instead: Rossiter’s “processual media theory” radicalized empirics making sense of the environment, communication and feedback loops [2].

This is Not a Drill Collective on Saturday 7th July 2018 featuring electronic musicians and audience in the gallery alongside projects from visual artists and performers, and Telematic Cafe.

In the gallery, Telematic Café reorganizes perspectives: a historic Telematic Café time lapse plays in the first days; in the second week – the retrieved social media pictures of #TiNaDCollective are replayed back on the screen. The photos telematically resonate in social media and develop new encounters/ perspectives, these develop a spiraling course through interfaces – gallery, mobile, screen. If one is to handle data objects and archives, then second order cybernetics must be at work – the observing subject is part of the observed system, new contexts are added and fed back, as in Rossiter’s processual aesthetics. In accord with the event’s disclaimer “this is not a drill” the The Song of Memories evolves at Telematic Café running process and wanting to come to some relation between visualization and reality conditions.

Gallery view of Telematic Cafe showing the sound file (on PC) produced from social media images (on screen).

In ascertaining limits of “data visualization,” the mere result of The Song of Memories (#TiNaDCollective) certainly does not propose an expert solution or reasonable response to the challenge! It’s idea is social meaning linked to specific location and historic time of the event. Equate memories to imagination. The result is yet another thing, other things, anyway. Someone reads patterns of code – new knowledge emerges. Some find technological sound a depressing way of conceiving the world, even more so – a repulsive form of aesthetic recycling. For others – electronic rhythm and dynamics are pleasing to their senses.

What do you think?

[1] See Lev Manovich, Data Visualization as New Abstraction and Anti-Sublime, 2002.

[2] See Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions, NAi Publishers, Institute of Network Cultures, 2006.

 

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Deindustrialization and the Materialities of Labour – Part I – Discussion Recordings

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Enjoy highlights and listen to ambient recordings from Part I of Telematic Cafe labour-themed discussions! As announced before – this Telematic Cafe event was inspired by VACANTGeelong Project.

Telematic Cafe is thankful to the VACANTGeelong Project organisers, especially, Mirjana Lozanovska and Cameron Bishop of Deakin University for collaboration with Telematic Cafe during Open Studio Day, 24 May 2017. Telematic Cafe would like to extend special thanks to Ian Priddle from Codeacious for responsiveness and time!

The “Labour of Making” discussion focused on the significance of manual, constructive and creative production. Discussion partners: VACANTGeelong project artist Robert Mihajlovski (RM) and architect & Senior Lecturer of the School of Architecture and Built Environment at Deakin University Dr David Beynon (DB). Moderator: Telematic Cafe curator Marita Batna.

DB: There are similarities between drawing by hand and drawing with a mouse or trackpad. But there is also a difference. There is some kind of distance between you and the object… maybe because you can’t actually touch it. Your hands have been away from it… [physical object] appears through some kind of alchemic process.

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DB: Meaning of writing comes through syntax and context more than the physical. [..] Maybe it does not matter so much for the reader whether it is actually written by hand or written on a word processor – that makes a difference to the person who is writing.

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DB: Is there a difference when you are physically constructing a robot and when you got parts?  Or, when you are actually doing a design for a robot? I am used, as an architect, to be one step removed from any kind of real construction anyway.

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RM: By industrial revolution people used to make everything by hand. [..] Today many things are made in an industrial way but through robots. There is less and less skills. [..] In art – in the past – one used to make colours by hand – now everything is going through the factory. Acrylic is made like plastic bags. The past knowledge about how to make [art] materials by hand is nearly forgotten. [..] It is much easier to create but some things are always missing – and that is our creative and spiritual side.

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DB: I think, in some ways, for people who are traditionally already removed from making things, like architects [..] there is a potential that maybe this will give you more control. [The future] will essentially give a possibility to make a building like you make a model. [..] In some ways you will be less limited then now because it will be you and one medium as opposed to you and a whole series of processes.

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DB: We are tool making and using species. And if we don’t have a capacity to make tools of some sort whatever the medium is – we lose some of our purpose. People need to feel that they are actually contributing something to the world. And the basic way of doing it is to make something: there is something in the world that wasn’t there before.

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RM: In the beginning art was made to serve magic and religious purposes. Even today art is a mirror of our social and ideological ideas we have. [..] Art has different branches and targets. [..] Popular art is serving masses – it is more mass media than it was in the past, but still – it’s a mirror of the human condition.

 

Full Recording:

 

The “Labour of Technology” discussion was looking at the role of “post-fordism” in connection with information technologies, communication systems and data. Discussion partners: architect and Senior Lecturer of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Deakin University Dr. Mirjana Lozanovska (ML); artist and Lecturer in Art and Performance at Deakin University Dr. Anne Wilson (AW), and Ian Priddle (IP), the founder of Codeacious, a software company based in Geelong. Moderator: Telematic Cafe curator Marita Batna (MB).

ML: Post-fordism is often described as this fluid thing of production and consumption. [..] How can you have general public? [..] The question of who is the producer and who is the public is erased theoretically but I would contest that to an extent. [..] It becomes a transnational way of understanding production but [..] there is still labour production of objects.

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ML: The idea that the line between production and consumption is blurred – is interesting on one hand. [..] Obviously, when those things are blurred, it is not “products.” [..] So, what is then produced, and what is being consumed? I think those details will become important for us to get into a discussion that is below conventional understanding of contemporary work. [..] One of the things that might be produced is new social networks, new digital networks, new ideas of what, in fact, is social – what is friendship. [..] Our friendships that are manufactured due to kinds of interactions and interfaces that people have in social media – what do these friendships mean?

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IP: Governments providing data they have and making it freely available is extremely beneficial. [..] If I present to you all the rainfall across entire country and I also say – here is this other set of data – all the traffic lights [..] you might go: “I know how to combine those two things!” to come up with something interesting and useful.

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IP: I encourage you to go to http://www.data.gov.au/ – you can see huge variety of data that is currently available. Unfortunately, it is not live, they are data sets but you just get ideas by seeking all the things that you could become aware of.

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IP: In the case of public services [..] – sharing that data is incredible. [..] It is definitely developing. I am glad to say that Geelong has one of the highest number of open data sets for a local council, I think, in Australia. So, Geelong is doing a really good job. There is a shift towards making more data open. Then, the next phase will be making that data more live and more accessible. I think that is an area we need to explore.

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AW: As I understand that quote [Sean Cubitt claimed that technologies are symbolically inhabited by ancestors and their knowledge but it is invisible to us – MB] our ancestors are inhabiting data through knowledge, through distillation of facts and knowledge that comes through data. [..] Data that is available to us now, in whatever form, has come about through other knowledges and other forms of media in the past. [..] It ended up today as ways of reading information. [..] Pixels and particles are quite different. Particles are in chemical photography and pixels are in digital photography. And that is a different reading of light. [..] One relies upon mathematical formula and one relies upon inherent nature of quantum physics and how light travels. [..] So one appears to be more organic, but one appears to be a distillation down. [..] There is a kind of disconnect, but obviously information is important. [..] I see it as a limitation – that distillation down.

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ML: If you look at some of the works done here, for example, Sarah Duyshart’s work: she took the sounds of the raw data that were recorded during the workshops with Macedonian community. To take that and feed it into the program that identified just the base sound [..] – it turns this social chatter into [..] a kind of bodily biological life force. [..] I think what Sarah did was primordial and futuristic.

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IP: We recently did an installation that required VR hardware. We didn’t have VR experience but we could combine this with sound, light and movement to create an experience for people. Because we have focused on understanding those mediums – we knew those boundaries and created art “of sorts” within those boundaries. Because all of this stuff is so new it requires a lot of time and effort and, in particular, digital skills to understand what you can and cannot work with. [..] As technology evolves we will be able to play with it more.

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ML: What is the possibility of experimentation? The experimentation requires preparatory work of labour in order for it to be a real experiment otherwise it is just immersive pleasure.

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IP: With the emergence of maker spaces you can join other people who have certain knowledge (these are treated as public spaces) – you can play with different things. Then, people who are interested in that will be able to create, but I guess: will they put in the labour and efforts to go further?

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AW: In creative practice, I have noticed, technology is the second thing, [..] you have idea and then technology [..] this is how you learn. And this is one way of learning technology.

Full Recording:

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Shadowland

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Image  – Kazuhiro Goshima

Kazuhiro Goshima’s film Shadowland uses the night-time Tokyo to construct the illusion of 3D vision discovering this process with one 2D DSLR camera.

“Shadows” are cast on the streets by the headlights of cars driving through the city. Every night, the city itself is overwritten like a retina thousands of times, and no one can decipher its memories [1] – this observation has led the artist to focus on the poetic nature of city at night that became a key to creating 3D imagery. Shadowland is a stereoscopic (3D) film but unlike common 3D works it takes the viewer on a journey of immersion from 2D to 3D image unveiling the subtlety of 3D formation through the language of shadows.

How does Shadowland work? Kazuhiro Goshima explains its main principle: The essential factor of 3D vision is binocular parallax. I derive parallax from the slight time lag between the movies projected onto the right and left eyes. There are no digital special effects. I show the same movies to each eye but there is slight time lag (1-5 frames). (…) In Shadowland, I shot footage using one fixed camera. The moving element as the source of parallax is the car headlights [2].

SHADOWLAND-mechanism-by-Kazuhiro-Goshima

Full story of the technical production of Shadowland can be found on the Ars Electronica webpage: http://prix2014.aec.at/prixwinner/12220/

The film poetically embraces the feeling of walking the streets at night and being present in the moment, appreciating the beauty and uniqueness of imagery that emerges and disappears like ocean waves. The viewer is bound to discover aesthetic pleasure in reading shadows.

Shadowland won Award of Distinction in the world’s leading forum of electronic media art Ars Electronica in 2014 in the category of  Computer Animation/Film/VFX. Fragment of the jury statement: Shadowland is a wonderful combination of what we call  “found animation” with an innovative use of stereoscopic technique [3].

The stereoscopic side-by-side version of Shadowland will be presented for watching with 3D glasses within Telematic Cafe: On Air (at Beavs Bar) as part of Geelong After Dark on the 6th May 2016 between 6pm and 10pm.

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Image – Kazuhiro Goshima

 

Kazuhiro Goshima’s website.

[1] Kazuhiro Goshima. 2014. Shadowland. In CyberArts 2014, Ars Electronica, 26-27.

[2] Kazuhiro Goshima. 2014. Shadowland. In CyberArts 2014, Ars Electronica, 26-27.

[3] Suzanne Buchan, Joe Gerhard, Jurgen Hagler, Sabine Hirtes, Quayola. 2014. Intangible Worlds. In CyberArts 2014, Ars Elecronica, 17.

 

Radio Whispers (Bhagavad-Gita)

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A project of Geelong After Dark 6 May 2016. Venue: Telematic Cafe located at Beavs Bar

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The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this principle the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt by the radio to give a truly public character to Public occasions is a step in the right direction.

    —  Bertolt Brecht «The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication», 1932

Telematic Cafe teams up with THE PULSE 94.7 FM – Geelong region’s community radio to deliver the apparatus of radio that is inclusive of its users throughout its entire cycle of communication. Radio Whispers (Bhagavad-Gita) works as a collective radio model – people-generated communication space within the system of radio. The three activity stages enacted for participation within Telematic Cafe are:

  • send,
  • listen,
  • talk.

Radio Whispers become a process in which information is fed into, processed, interpreted and transmitted for yet another interpretation. Participants randomly select and submit (send) numbers of Bhagavad-Gita quotes. This information flow generates a feedback of quotes recovered in the form of written text which is used to read them for live transmission (talk).

Radio experience continues at the listening stage.  Instead of delivering a soundscape feeding into the space of everyday noise, Radio Whispers re-broadcasts the audio signal from FM to AM band and captures it through self-made devices  – crystal sets and headphones – replicating early days of the radio. Listening from crystal sets becomes an intimate and meaningful radio experience for the listener.

Containing a total of 700 verses Bhagavad-Gita is written in Sanskrit, but has become a global text – translated in many languages and in many versions, it is also a subject of constant interpretation. Mixed with the English reading of quotes by participants are songs of rap music, (rhythmic vigorous chanting) in national languages which feature global adaptation of this US-born music genre to powerfully express political views and identities of marginalized or not marginalized groups of people, communities or nations.

 

Live broadcast: THE PULSE 94.7 FM 6 May 2016 6pm-8pm AEST. Radio listening with crystal sets within Telematic Cafe continues till 10pm. 

Team:

Marita Batna (concept)
Michael Morgan (concept)
Leo Renkin, THE PULSE 94.7 FM (concept)
Terry Guida
Matt Gogarty, THE PULSE 94.7 FM
Darby Hewitt, THE PULSE 94.7 FM
Steve Juhaz
Toki Babai

Crystal sets by Geelong Amateur Radio Club. Thank You to Lou Blasco

Bhagavad-Gita website.

 

Duet

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duet_prototype1

Image – Motion.Lab

Created by Deakin Motion.Lab researcher Dr. John McCormick, PhD candidate Stephanie Andrews and researcher Dr. Jordan Beth Vincent, Duet is a Virtual Reality artwork that invites viewers to don a VR headset and engage in a movement interaction with an Artificially Intelligent entity.

“The AI entity incorporates machine learning and neural networks in its design,” says McCormick. “The AI agent is able to accumulate movement knowledge in a way that mimics human learning and transforms an interactive experience into a collaborative one.”  In other words, the AI entity learns from previous participants in terms of how to move and respond like a human, and allows a user to embark on a movement-based dialogue between participant and digital partner.

Duet incorporates virtual reality, full body motion capture, and the AI entity to explore concepts of embodied knowledge, shared movement poetics, and distortions of personal identity.

As Andrews describes, “both the human participant and the AI avatar become performers, spontaneously improvising with each other and exploring wordless communication.” 

Within the VR headest, Duet generates a visualization of the relationship between the user and the agent, exploring illusions of perceptual space through the use of minimal aesthetics, and offers a new perspective on how virtual reality might expand the possibilities of human-computer interaction.

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webDuet-1

Images – Motion.Lab

 

 

Telematic Café: On Air – Friday Night 6 May 2016, 6-10 pm

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TelematicCafe-Image-Michael-Morgan-Symbiotic-Illusion-Detail

The next edition of Telematic Cafe is here – and will form a part of Geelong After Dark, 6pm to 10pm, Friday 6 May 2016. Addressing this year’s festival theme – “air” – Telematic Café draws on the nature of air as it signifies immateriality and space, and is titled Telematic Café: On Air. “Telematic communication models” are therefore relating to the capacity of constructing new spaces, highlighting the merge of separate worlds and modes of materiality and providing expanded/new areas for communication, experience and existence.

In the framework of Geelong’s own Night Arts festival – Telematic Cafe will open up for the night to temporarily occupy and transform two very different but close locations to create site(s) that will make the art experience a tangible /physical activity which – metaphorically – compares to the process of having a coffee within the social environment of cafe.

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Telematic Cafe: On Air is composed to offer four projects across two locations.

LOCATION 1: BEAVS BAR (Little Malop street, Geelong). This people’s favourite eclectic lounge bar will host:

Kazuhiro Goshima (JP). SHADOWLAND. Through a poetic narrative this stereoscopic (3D) film explores the creation of 3D vision with DSLR camera. The work brought the artist the Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2014.  

Radio Whispers (Bhagavad-Gita) with THE PULSE 94.7FM (community radio) and Geelong Amateur Radio Club.  A collaboration on radio waves and a chance to explore the construction of radio as the apparatus of communication – from live production and broadcast to listening.

LOCATION 2: VACANT SHOP (Cnr Little Malop Street and James Street). This rustic place will focus on the creation of new realities featuring two artist projects:

Stephanie Andrews, John McCormick, Jordan Vincent and Deakin Motion.Lab. DUET. Exploring the newest technologies, this virtual reality experience brings you into communication relationships, via movement, with your artificially intelligent partner.

Michael Morgan. SYMBIOTIC ILLUSION. A monumental installation reflecting the material qualities – solid, liquid, to air-like and a statement of the metaphor about illusionary nature of coexistence and the contradiction contained in human-related conflicts.

Telematic Cafe: On Air is curated by Marita Batna.

Top Image: Michael Morgan. Symbiotic Illusion (detail), 2016.

Preliminary Announcement of the Next Event of Telematic Café

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Hello! — Telematic Café (TC) is greeting you and announcing the coming of its next event! The inaugural appearance of TC as part of Telematic Embrace – Café that took place at George Paton Gallery (University of Melbourne Union House, May 2015) – the venue famous for its radical approaches to art in Australia in the 1970s and 80s – established TC as an archaeological and reflective project seeking meanings of technology-based mediation in post-digital conditions. It is the wider motivation of TC to revisit and refresh avant-garde visions in the time of digital culture.

The next edition of Telematic Café is making its way to you by continuing explorations into old and new technologies. Its key guidelines are: to create transformative, transient and temporary “telematic communication models,” – this may take various forms including distributed spatial constructs by means of telecommunication networks but should ultimately focus on awareness and creative thinking about the Medium of our expanded connections and experiences.

The TC project is not programmatic, but rather discursive, and curious to ask a question – what can be learnt by the possibilities of the post-digital aesthetics of representation within the meta-space of networks (the data extracted from these networks) but also – the avant-gardist tradition of instigating, within an experimental art process, alternative real-time systems for communication, or even relationships? A platform of testing and “tasting” of what’s on Menu, TC occupies the field of art where it matters how it operates here and now: TC functions as an interactive environment in social, collective, possibly – collaborative contexts.

the Ideological Picnic

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The promotional image for Richie Cyngler, Ideological Picnic.

Richie Cyngler. The Ideological Picnic, 2015.

Electronics and free libre soft and hardware

2015

The piece is comprised of an interactive touch interface for audio improvisation. The content is played via four individual audio streams which are randomly loaded and cached originally from online sources; mutable and mixable by the user. Samples within each of the four streams are thematically tied in some way.

Have an ideological picnic and experiment with the interface for yourself.

Instructions

Touch the screen to activate

Experiment with the sliders and buttons to determine functions

Refine your soundscape

Listen

Play

Listen… drift

Functionally this object is a Raspberry Pi 2 computer running a suitable Linux distribution, Pure Data Extended and The Ideological Picnic patch. Sound sources are all available online and are indexed and linked at glitchpop.com

Richie Cyngler investigates the use of free libre technologies to make audio-visual interactive installation and performance objects. The Ideological Picnic is an exploration of soundscape remix in a personal interactive experience.

Interlemetry/ Intralemetry

What does this tool do? It is capable of facilitating meditation? Transformation?

Thanks to the work and voices of

Slavoj Zizek
Benjamen Walker
Astrid Taylor
Bell Hooks
William S Burroughs
Louise Bourgois
Gil Fronsdal
E Gabriella Coleman
Jaron Lanier

PTC

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Blurry Pittonkatonk Banner

Chris Williams. Pittonkatonk Banner, May 2015.

PTC is a binaural audio recording of “Pittonkatonk“, a free brass band barbecue in Pittsburgh, PA (USA). PTC was inspired by a desire to be challenged. I wanted people of Melbourne to experience being present in Pittsburgh. The audio was taken live and later digitally processed. The various layers of sound encourage the listeners to feel being immersed in the crowd.

Of course, the audio doesn’t replace the physical experience of the festival. There isn’t the feel of people dancing. There isn’t the smell of beer and barbecue. However, the listeners personalize the audio by filling gaps with their own experience.

Who do you imagine is there with you?

In the recording, the featured bands are the May Day Marching Band, the PitchBlak Brass Band, and the What Cheer? Brigade.

Background:

Among many others, curator Marita Batna and I collaborated on the project “Steel City and the Land of Oz“. In that project, viewers in Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and Geelong, VIC (AUS) could simultaneously see each other’s city through two keyholes. For the people in Geelong, their keyhole viewed Pittsburgh from the top of one of Pittsburgh’s tallest buildings.

“Steel City and the Land of Oz” was visual. The next challenge pointed toward the auditory.

I took cues from the natural world. The flora and fauna of Pittsburgh are intimately specific to the city. How about the feeling of being in a forest in Pittsburgh? To hear the birds and wind through the trees. I wanted to capture the sense of the organic in one environment and transpose it to another.

Pittsburgh is a small and lively city. Once known for producing much of the world’s steel, Pittsburgh is now a leader in many technological industries, such as sustainability and robotics. Pittsburgh has also become more attractive to the movie industry. It was a primary filming location for the movie “The Dark Knight Rises”. The stadium in the movie is Heinz Field.

As the temperature rises, people discover more places and events of the city. I remembered that the people and events are also intimately specific to the city. The sounds of voices through the streets.

In a public park of Pittsburgh, there was a free, annual brass band barbecue called “Pittonkatonk“. At the event, an attendee is surrounded by laughter, clapping, stomping and, of course, music. It’s an immersive environment.

I replaced the environment of a forest with an environment of people attending an event in a forest. The sounds of birds and people through trees. How could I represent that experience? The method is a binaural recording.

Unlike stereo recordings, binaural recordings account for the shape of the human ears and how that affects the perception of sound. The result is an experience of being immersed acoustically in the environment. With headphones, the listener hears sounds in specific locations around the body.

Of course, an audio recording is inherently limited. It’s removed in both time and space. It simulates the acoustic dimensions of a past event in a particular place.

Because of the contribution of Pittonkatonk to Pittsburgh’s vibrant music community, the City of Pittsburgh declared May 2 to be “Pittonkatonk Day“.

I’m here to listen 2

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Image from the work by Camille Robinson. I'm Here to Listen.

Camille Robinson. I’m Here to Listen, 2014

When any kind of communication technology is used – letters, telephones, email, etc. – there is the expectation that there will be a person to be at the other end of that communication listening to what we have to say, and that in turn our partner in communication will expect us to listen to them.

When we use communication technologies that give a sense of immediacy – telephones, Skype – we commit an act of trust in that technology and the network of which it forms a part, and submit to the belief that the person heard and/or seen is present, willing, and able to communicate with us in real time. We trust that the network will act as a faithful extension of the senses, and show us something genuine; and faithfully represent ourselves, and show us to others as we are. When I call you, and I hear and/or see you through the network, I believe that you are real, and that you will listen, and that you will believe I am too.

We give this trust even when so much of what is experienced in our lives through screens, speakers, and headphones, is a fabrication or simulation. I flip from a window playing a movie file, to a web browser, to an email client, to a game, to a video chat window, and I believe and expect that each will represent a particular form of reality or unreality, and tailor my perception and understanding, and my actions, to those beliefs and expectations. If we set these beliefs aside though, why should we trust what we see and here? Is anyone listening? If so, who?

I’m here to listen 2 interrogates the act of listening, its mediation by technology, and the acts of trust that lead us to listen and feel listened to when using communication networks. Through the situation it places listeners in and the structure of experience it creates, it endeavors to drawn them into reflection on the dual role of listener/speaker, the performance of listening, the sounds and gestures that signify it, and the trust placed in communication networks.

I’m here to listen 2 is my second piece to explore the act of listening in the context of networked communications, and is based on ideas developed through my PhD project Listening Art: making sonic artworks that critique listening.

Listening Art responded to a situation in the sonic arts, whereby artists tend to take for granted that how a listener listens to a sonic artwork affects what that listener perceives that sonic artwork to be. It sought to address this problem by making sonic artworks that took criticality of listening as their primary concern. Using an integration of schema theory and immanent critique, I structured sonic artworks around critical discourses on listening. Using an adaptation of the Heuristic research method, I determined whether those artworks fostered critical reflection on listening, through collection and appraisal of listeners’ descriptions of their experiences.

– Camille Robinson, May 2015

ELAINE

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Travis Cox. Still from ELAINE's generated mosaic, 2014. Monitor.

Travis Cox. Still from ELAINE’s generated mosaic, 2014.

ELAINE perceives the world through only what she has experienced visually previously. She analyses what she sees through the camera for the dominant colour within her current view, learning to present that colour through storing that image for later use within her output. The output of the work consists of a mosaic image of her current view, the mosaic being made of images she has previously stored. If presented with colours she has yet to encounter she will replace that part of the image with the closest match that she has experienced.

This means that as visitors offer new experiences through their clothing, objects they hold or more purposeful engagement with the camera (presenting images from their phone, for example), they are adding to the ‘language’ that ELAINE has with which to express herself. The user’s image is recorded and leaves an indelible mark, assuming that is, that they have shown her something new. As these images are not forgotten or overwritten, this also means that earlier in her life she has a larger capacity for learning new things. First engagement with a new colour will forever be associated with that moment and that image will replay again every time she comes back into contact with that particular colour.

ELAINE consists of an objective codebase that defines how she computes; stores and displays information, however the final output is subjectively based on the experiences that the users input to the work through the camera. Not just from the experiences offered through giving of new images to display but also in offering their actions and presence to the camera to be presented through the mosaic in real time.

Every time ELAINE is started she is a new entity, coloured by the space and experiences of her context. As she progresses with her life she matures, but her memories of past experiences, especially her first day, will colour her perceptions for life. ELAINE is born of her context, and while she exists, is a barometer of moments within history of the space she inhabits and the people she has met.

For Telematic Café, two clones of ELAINE will exist at the same time with each copy’s eyes existing away from her body. Images captured by ELAINE at George Paton Gallery will be offered for interpretation to the ELAINE located at the Victorian College of the Arts Digital Hub and vice versa. This means that the mosaic created in each place by ELAINE will be a reflection of the experiences of the other entity.

ELAINE was created by artist and researcher Travis Cox and is part of a series of works exploring the underlying systems of meaning production within computer artworks. More of his works can be seen at www.codedisplayuser.com and www.denouncetheclock.com.

Welcome to Telematic Cafe

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Dear friends,

Telematic Café (TC) is going to open and operate at George Paton Gallery from 13 May though to 29 May. Situated in the heart of the University of Melbourne it will welcome visitors into its relaxed warm space, where the coffee will be available for free.

What can you expect from TC?  It is a discursive environment aimed at considering communication networks and will enable critical and creative experiences of communication in the network space. Works by Camille Robinson, Travis Cox, Tara Elizabeth Cook, Richie Cyngler and USA-based Chris Williams will resonate as unique ‘telematic communication models’ and you need to find out for yourself what they are about. Teaser images for some of these models are posted here.

Integrated in the Telematic Café will also be blogging and live-tweeting (#telematiccafe).

Travis Cox. Still from ELAINE's generated mosaic, 2014. Monitor.

Travis Cox. Still from ELAINE’s generated mosaic, 2014.

The work by Travis Cox – ELAINE (Encapsulated Learning Algorithm Interpreting New Experiences) will create a dynamic framework of exchange between VCA and Parkville by being located at VCA Digital Hub Foyer and the George Paton Gallery.

The promotional image for Richie Cyngler, Ideological Picnic.

Richie Cyngler. Ideological Picnic, 2015.

 

 

Image from the work by Camille Robinson. I'm Here to Listen.

Camille Robinson. I’m Here to Listen II, 2014

 

TELEMATIC CAFE details

Venue: George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne Union House (2nd level), Parkville  +  VCA Digital Hub Foyer
Time: 11am-5pm Monday to Friday
Dates: 13 – 29 May
For more information contact curator Marita Batna, marita.batna@gmail.com, 0425 326 728

Disable access (via elevator). Seating provided.

Telematic Café is partnering with George Paton Gallery and the University of Melbourne Student Union Creative Arts Department.

The artists involved in Telematic Embrace—Café acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which this work was developed and is presented on. We pay our respect to their elders past and present.