EX_03

Case Study
Listening Post-Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, 2002

“It is as if Hal, the haywire computer from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, were giving an avant-garde poetry reading with subtitles.”

Listening Post is a collaboration on the part of sound artist and statistician that presents a visual and aural experience based on the thoughts of the virtual world. A suspended, semicircular grid comprised of 231 LED screens displays various forms of text data collected from thousands of unrestricted internet chat rooms, online forums, and other sources of digital discussion spaces in real-time, and read aloud by synthesized voice. Computer algorithms and software filters sift through the successive waves of incoming text and display and announce particular words or phrases based on a preset that can be set and adjusted by the Listening Post database. The system goes through a cyclical rotation of successive algorithms that change the way that the system interprets and portrays the information it has collected, each with a unique visual mapping and sound dynamic. Essentially, Listening Post “gives a visual, palpable, and audible form to online activities”. Rubin contends that, “while these spaces, (chat rooms, etc.), are by definition public and social, the experience of “being in” such spaces is silent and solitary”. Hansen and Rubin have produced a tangible acknowledgement to the existence of these online social networks and given them a voice. The Listening Post translates this chatter into a physical environment.

The nature of the interactivity of the project is not one of the system interacting with the natural environment, as in many other interactive projects, but rather the system operating in accordance with the otherwise unseen stimuli of the collective conscious of the world. It has been deemed to possess a level of “delegated interactivity” where the viewer can see the dramatization of the system output of the interface between human to machine to human and participate in the exchange.

The challenge in designing such an interface is apparent in that the system has to take the mass of

incoming messages and translate it into something comprehensible both visually and audibly. For

the designers, “the primary design problem presented by the project was one of intelligibility, of enabling visitors to infer meaning from the textual commentary, without losing sight of its complexity and dynamism”. The filters and presets prevent the output from being overrun with information. Even with only a small portion of the screens active, it is sometimes difficult to interpret
the entirety of the content. Sound becomes essential for the visitor to “extract meaning from the installation”. The “melody rises and falls in response to shifts in online traffic volume, like a wind chime stirring in response to fluctuations in air
mass”.

Video:

video1

Sources:

www.earstudio.com

AD March 2005

Boumon, Margot. The Machine Speaks The Worlds Thoughts. Parachute no112 108-25 2003

Bureand, Annick; Torgoff. Ars Electronica. Art Press no307 72-3 D 2004

Sony Retail Studio

1426 Wilshire Blvd. Santa Monica CA

Links:

ALLESWIRDGUT_TURNON

EX_02

EX_02 is an exercise based on the capabilities of movement achieved with pins and rubber bands on a 1" x 1" grid of pin-holes. The object is to create a variety of spaces that can be reconfigured to increase/decrease in size and orientation based on a dialogue that we specified. On my particular board you will notice 6 differently colored pins, two of which represent primary occupants, and are always present, and four others that represent guests , and enter the space periodically. These pins move throughout the space according the movement constrains of a corresponding chess piece. Black=King, Orange=Queen, Blue=Bishop, Green=Knight, Red=Rook, and Yellow=Pawn. These colored pieces are also representative of different professors here at Cal Poly and their movements take their individual attitudes towards architecture and each other into account. The pin board itself was designed around the concept of overlapping, and ephemeral spaces and I looked towards the idea of a Venn-Diagram to ahieve this effect. The video shows an animation of the combination of EX_01 and EX_02 in a 3D environment. Here you will witness the representation of the Venn-Diagram idea in conjunction with a network of objects obtained in EX_01. I see this as "encapsulated spaces"

3D Animation

Pin Board Gif (24hr cycle) and Default: (click to enlarge)

EX_01

EX_01 tested our abilities at pattern recognition and design. We began by isolating patterns in six individual images, 2 patterns each from their respective sources of nature, machine, and film; their patterns were combined to form one cohesive image, (first image). We then went through multiple stages of extraction to modify this image to create a new emergent pattern, (second image below). Again, we went through phases of reduction and optimization until we arrived at a final piece of the pattern that we would use in some way to arrive at a new pattern that was simple yet incredibly refined. In my particular project you will see this "pinwheel" shape that served as the basis for my pattern. The pinwheel shape is a simple derivation that is easily capable of being replicated and attached to one another. I became interested in the idea of a pattern based on the relationship of a multiplicity of objects. The 2D pattern (last image) is the final outcome of this exercise. However, our findings here would greatly influence our work in EX_02. (click images to enlarge)

EX_tras

"Zones of Transformation": Mitchell DeJarnett