(more…)The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and who lives in a state of fear is a dead man.
Albert Einstein (a reminder from The Museum of Lost Wonder)
Giedion/Kircher is my vehicle for applying art, music and technology — along with concept and narrative development, information architecture, UX design, etc. — to create brand experiences, immersive environments and various other interactive media solutions for corporate clients, educational institutions and production companies. Sometimes this involves partnering with an agency; sometimes I’m working as a full-service “one-stop shop.”
Refining objectives and messaging, explore methods for measuring success, and identify how a given engagement fits into larger strategies. Recommending and conducting research to better understand the needs and desires of audiences. From these processes come detailed plans for creating compelling experiences with measurable results.
While a great deal of the interactive magic happens in the software realm, many solutions also involve hardware components such as embedded sensors, microcontrollers, networked devices, audio and lighting — as well as integration into scenic elements, staging and architectural environments.
From high-level design concepts down to detailed specifications, imagining visions for audience experiences and create roadmaps for their successful execution. This is often an iterative process, with visualizations at increasing levels of detail — describing information architecture, navigation and interaction paradigms designed to meet well-defined goals.
Managing the creation of solutions from initial concept through final delivery — installing and supporting digital solutions and associated infrastructure at venues ranging from museums and trade shows to galleries, festivals and more.
From refining existing assets to generating new graphic and motion design, typography treatments, user interface components, dynamic infographics, video, animation, sound design and more — making sure all the essential pieces are in place to convey messages and inform audiences in an engaging manner.
Developing and maintaining proprietary platforms and processes to streamline the creation of interactive experiences. Modular architectures and tools facilitate a continuing lifecycle for recurring activations and stand-alone tools to further creative endeavor and optimize communication channels.
In 2024 a primary focus for R&D is the application of theories involving the symbolism and meaning of architectural experiences to further digital/interactive narratives. This is a great excuse to review a few titles in the Library.
I believe that at this point in history we have to think about all digital experiences (and all hybrid experiences, as the “real” world and the “virtual” become increasingly convergent) as movement through three dimensions (plus the temporal dimension). It’s not just about creating “content” but also creating environments that express meaning, enabling journeys through spaces that further narratives. Fortunately, while the technology to create the experiences may be new, we have literally thousands of years of guidance from architects, artists and philosophers on how to proceed effectively.
The Brewery Artwalk is a twice annual open studio weekend at the worlds largest art complex ….
The creation of the Brewery Arts Complex began in 1982 at the site of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery. With the passing of the Artist-In-Residence code, artists could rent live/work space in industrially zoned buildings. We rented only to artists and that is our policy to this day.
In July 1997, the LA Weekly called us “the world’s largest artist-in-residence community” and in a March 1999 Los Angeles Times article The Brewery was quoted as the “world’s largest art complex.” These are true lofts, not apartments, in industrial buildings that are a part of what has become a uniquely vibrant and creative community.
Here are the notes posted to tell people what to expect when they dropped by my space during the Brewery Artwalk open studios weekend.
https://lightspacemodulator.com/welcome-to-brewery-artwalk/
The main theme is “intermedia” — fusion of live/interactive video and audio (and some analog and traditional media in the mix): works-in-progress, experiments (and a bit of finished work).
While moving forward on a new body of work in 2023 for Lightspace Modulator — my continuing intermedia art endeavor — I’ve also been taking some time for a look back at the history of the project and a review of some of the conceptual underpinnings of the process.
(all the stills, below, are from recent live sessions)
There are a number of terms thrown around, these days, to describe the general domain in which I work, including “new media,” “interactive media,” “multimedia,” “transmedia,” “audiovisual performance” — and each of these terms is relevant, in some way:
“New media” has been described by Lev Manovich as representing “a convergence of two separate historical trajectories: computing and media technologies” and that its various elements, “graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts … have become computable; that is, they comprise simply another set of computer data.” (The Language of New Media, 2001). Two decades later we pretty much take these things for granted, and CD-ROMs and 8-bit video games certainly don’t feel at all “new” anymore — so what makes something “new media,” now? For me it’s just the idea of always thinking about how I might exploit the latest available technologies as part of my process — always asking the question, “what’s possible, now, that wasn’t possible last year (or last week)?”
“Interactive media” is a fairly straightforward concept: the experience must involve the active participation, in real time, of the artist and/or the audience (preferably both, in my model). This is in contrast to the passive experience of an audience in a linear playback model.
“Multimedia,” “transmedia,” “audiovisual” all imply an experience that involves multiple media (simultaneously): image and sound, of course, but other “traditional” elements such as text might come into play (we also might consider a range of tech-driven components such as lighting, stage effects, haptics, etc.). This often implies a greater degree of “immersion” in the experience through the triggering of multiple senses.
I prefer the term “intermedia” as it implies all of the above, with an emphasis on the connections between the multiple media: the idea that they are not just synchronized, but actively driven by a single source and/or driving or influencing each other (this also implies a dynamic, interactive real time or performance context, as opposed to linear playback).
It should be noted that the term “intermedia” has also been used by many people over the years with varying definitions. For example, Gene Youngblood (Expanded Cinema, 1970) takes the idea of connectedness into a much greater context: “… a universal trend toward the artist as ecologist, art as environment … subsuming the eco-system of our planet itself into the art process.”
Sounds good to me, Thomas! — but I’m probably not thinking quite this big in my process, at the moment. Then again, maybe sometimes I am.
The Lightspace Modulator concept, then, could be described as audio (music, sound design), video, graphics (2D and 3D), text, typography — all seamlessly integrated in real time in a live performance context (and using custom “intermedia instruments”).
While the output of a performance could be recorded, ultimately the “artifact” is a transient experience.
This means that the “art” is (at least) as much about the process of creation as the “output.”
Many 20th-century artists shared the belief that Bruno Munari described this way:
Artists no longer create … works. They create … creation.
Or as the influential conceptualist Sol LeWitt said,
The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.
For me, “creation” (the “machine”) is largely manifested by the code and data structures that go into my tools, or my “instrument.” There are, of course, many “traditional” production tools and techniques involved, as well, from photography and 3D modeling to sound design and music composition — but the “performance instrument” is the key component that brings everything together.
An essential part — perhaps the most important part — of my work is developing the process of creation, and central to this is the design and implementation of new tools (instruments) to further the “intermedia” concept. For me this means software (as a way to access audio and graphics engines): writing code and designing data structures to manifest paradigms for creation — in a way I think this is related to the Conceptualist idea of written instructions (the directions for the creation of a piece/experience, rather than the resulting piece/artifact/experience) as “artwork.”
My main axe is an application (“instrument”) I created called VSx, driven by game engine technology and controlled with a touchscreen interface (as well as MIDI controllers/instruments). Recently I developed a new performance UI that makes it more “playable” without the need for external (e.g., MIDI trigger) controllers.
Let’s look back on where this instrument came from, shall we?
László Moholy-Nagy’s Light Prop for an Electric Stage (created over the first three decades of the 20th century) has been an inspiration for my process on multiple levels. It is considered a work of sculpture (and is displayed as such as a museum piece), however the true purpose of the work was as a machine for creating visual effects (in real time, of course — there were no render queues in 1930!). The idea of creating films with dynamic geometric elements and lighting on a (virtual) “electric stage” is also a central concept in my process and the basic architecture of my primary tool (VSx). While the proper name for the piece was “Light Prop for an Electric Stage” it was nicknamed (and is more commonly known as) “Light-Space Modulator” — a phrase I borrowed (and slightly modified).
Harvard Art Museums
One of the earliest electrically powered kinetic sculptures, Light Prop for an Electric Stage holds a central place in the history of modern sculpture. Representing the culmination of Moholy-Nagy’s experimentation at the Bauhaus, it incorporates his interest in technology, new materials, and, above all, light. Moholy sought to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world. He presented Light Prop at a 1930 exhibition of German design as a mechanism for generating “special lighting and motion effects” on a stage. The rotating construction produces a startling array of visual effects when its moving and reflective surfaces interact with the beam of light. The sculpture became the subject of numerous photographs as well as Moholy’s abstract film Lightplay: Black, White, Gray (1930).
Moholy-Nagy was only one of many artists in the early 20th-century (across multiple movements, including Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dada) experimenting with related ideas — redefining the concept of “art” in ways that still feel quite relevant, today.
This is a talk I did here in LA that references a few of these topics.
The intermedia journey for me began years ago in Boston and Cambridge, where I went to art school and was part of the live video performance “scene” (with a number of friends from MassArt, the Museum School, MIT and elsewhere). This was also where I built and began using a very early VSx prototype (called VS3 at the time) to generate mix sources that went into our (at the time) very analog live performance process (e.g., video feedback through NTSC mixers, and so on).
I also studied computer science on the east coast, with a focus on “the computer as artistic collaborator” — both from a psychological and social psychological (including “human factors”) perspective as well as engineering application. This really set the stage for all the work to follow.
Interestingly, most of my formal study in music back then was very analog indeed (piano, organ as well as traditional theory) — as my keyboard teacher hated synthesizers! But this was valuable as it forced me to focus on really playing — the tactile, physical performance of pounding on a keyboard — rather than turning knobs or pushing a mouse (though I would do eventually do plenty of knob-turning and, yes, this can be a legitimate way to perform, too).
Eventually I would find my way to LA, unquestionably a (if not the) global center for music and image-making — for media, technology, and storytelling — where I would meet a number of interesting and like-minded people while getting up on a number of the local stages — and would refine the process and the tools (moving into a more digital, game engine-driven model) …
In the immediate pre-pandemic days I had the opportunity to give the latest iteration of the VSx architecture some “beta testing” in front of real audiences — in Barcelona (Ombra Festival) and here in Santa Monica (as part of the CONTACT theater performance).
This was followed by a video for German rhythmic noise act Synapscape (created using VSx and the Ableton interface). While only partially a live mix (obviously the track was already complete, so this was just linear playback), visuals were still created “live” in real time using the same triggers and interfaces I’d use in a live music performance context.
Current research topics include ways to create dynamic narrative flow in abstract environments: how can the visual and auditory experience suggest a journey, a (dynamic, and interactive) transformation? Also looking into new ways to create content and environments, through procedural generation and machine learning. And of course continually exploring the possibilities offered by modern graphics engines, which are always changing …
… and I still look to the artistic innovators of a century ago for inspiration.
This is one of the reasons I live at the Brewery: A random encounter at the last open studios led to discussions about sound and image and live performance …
… and so a new intermedia performance collaboration between Los Angeles and Europe is in the works … can’t say too much about it, yet … eventually details will be here …
Music and sound design, words and narrative, a growing set of visual assets, and ultimately a live performance: these are the components of the “postmodern rock opera” The Continual Return of Dr. Ordinaire.
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PRESS RELEASE
November 16, 2022 McLean, VA — Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) announced today the opening of The Helix Center for Innovation, a collaborative, immersive space to demonstrate the transformative technologies that are helping solve the country’s most critical challenges across global defense, national security, and climate resilience. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held today at The Helix, located in Booz Allen’s Washington, DC (901 15th Street) facility, to recognize the firm’s latest investment in an ecosystem of innovation centers and labs dedicated to helping clients understand and leverage emerging technology.
“Innovation is central to everything we do at Booz Allen; it’s in our DNA,” said Susan Penfield, Booz Allen chief technology officer. “The world is being transformed by the rise of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), cyber, 5G, quantum, edge computing, and so many more. The Helix is the physical manifestation of our company’s VoLT (velocity, leadership, technology) growth strategy—leveraging emerging technology to speed solutioning against our clients’ most challenging mission needs.”
A combination of in-person experiences and digital elements, the 9,422-square-foot space features more than 30 simulations, product and capability demonstrations, hands-on activations, and immersive environments, including:
Initial, rotating demonstrations include:
“The Helix is purposefully designed to explore the art of the possible while demystifying how emerging technologies can be applied to the U.S. government’s current and future challenges,” said Melissa Lazarofsky, director of The Helix. “Through The Helix, we’re hoping to pull back the curtain for our clients, and make technology more accessible, explainable, and reachable.”
Press release source
CENTER FOR INNOVATION — THE HELIX
Business Wire: Booz Allen Opens New Flagship Center for Innovation
Washington Technology: Booz Allen built its ‘Helix’ hub for more than just demos
With the release of the new album by the legendary German rhythmic noise act Synapscape (Ant-Zen) comes the official video for “Dirty Deal”:
This piece — built around aggressive, dynamic 3D typography — was composed of footage generated entirely (and live, in real time) by the VSx visual synthesizer, making use of the UDP connection to Ableton Live — with some simple compositing and editing after the fact.
If you’re curious, some “making of” notes can be found at the Coredark Laboratories blog:
See more at lightspacemodulator.com.
Jonathan L. Zecher, Australian Catholic University
With some communities in rebooted lockdown conditions and movement restricted everywhere else, no one is posting pictures of their sourdough. Zoom cocktail parties have lost their novelty, Netflix can only release so many new series. The news seems worse every day, yet we compulsively scroll through it.
We get distracted by social media, yet have a pile of books unread. We keep meaning to go outside but somehow never find the time. We’re bored, listless, afraid and uncertain.
What is this feeling?
John Cassian, a monk and theologian wrote in the early 5th century about an ancient Greek emotion called acedia. A mind “seized” by this emotion is “horrified at where he is, disgusted with his room … It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading”. He feels:
such bodily listlessness and yawning hunger as though he were worn by a long journey or a prolonged fast … Next he glances about and sighs that no one is coming to see him. Constantly in and out of his cell, he looks at the sun as if it were too slow in setting.
This sounds eerily familiar. Yet, the name that so aptly describes our current state was lost to time and translation.
Read more:
What would Seneca say? Six Stoic tips for surviving lockdown
Etymologically, acedia joins the negative prefix a- to the Greek noun kēdos, which means “care, concern, or grief”. It sounds like apathy, but Cassian’s description shows that acedia is much more daunting and complex than that.
Cassian and other early Christians called acedia “the noonday demon”, and sometimes described it as a “train of thought”. But they did not think it affected city-dwellers or even monks in communities.
Rather, acedia arose directly out the spatial and social constrictions that a solitary monastic life necessitates. These conditions generate a strange combination of listlessness, undirected anxiety, and inability to concentrate. Together these make up the paradoxical emotion of acedia.
Evagrius of Pontus included acedia among the eight trains of thought that needed to be overcome by devout Christians. Among these, acedia was considered the most insidious.
It attacked only after monks had conquered the sins of gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, vainglory, and pride.
Cassian, a student of Evagrius, translated the list of sins into Latin. A later 6th century Latin edit gave us the Seven Deadly Sins. In this list, acedia was subsumed into “sloth”, a word we now associate with laziness.
Acedia appears throughout monastic and other literature of the Middle Ages. It was a key part of the emotional vocabulary of the Byzantine Empire, and can be found in all sorts of lists of “passions” (or, emotions) in medical literature and lexicons, as well as theological treatises and sermons.
It first appeared in English in print in 1607 to describe a state of spiritual listlessness. But it’s barely used today.
Read more:
Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone
As clinical psychology has reclassified emotions and mental states, terms like “melancholy” can sound archaic and moralising.
Emotional expressions, norms, and scripts change over time and vary between cultures. They mark out constellations of bodily sensations, patterns of thought and perceived social causes or effects.
Since these constellations are culturally or socially specific, as societies change, so do the emotions in their repertoire. With the decline of theological moralising, not to mention monastic influence, acedia has largely disappeared from secular vocabularies.
Now, the pandemic and governmental responses to it create social conditions that approximate those of desert monks. No demons, perhaps, but social media offers a barrage of bad (or misleading) news.
Social distancing limits physical contact. Lockdown constricts physical space and movement. Working from home or having lost work entirely both upend routines and habits. In these conditions, perhaps it’s time to bring back the term.
Read more:
What Groundhog Day (and my time in a monastery) taught me about lockdown
Reviving the language of acedia is important to our experience in two ways.
First, it distinguishes the complex of emotions brought on by enforced isolation, constant uncertainty and the barrage of bad news from clinical terms like “depression” or “anxiety”.
Saying, “I’m feeling acedia” could legitimise feelings of listlessness and anxiety as valid emotions in our current context without inducing guilt that others have things worse.
Second, and more importantly, the feelings associated with physical isolation are exacerbated by emotional isolation – that terrible sense that this thing I feel is mine alone. When an experience can be named, it can be communicated and even shared.
Read more:
How setting aside some ‘worry time’ can help reduce anxiety over COVID-19 lockdowns
Learning to express new or previously unrecognised constellations of feelings, sensations, and thoughts, builds an emotional repertoire, which assists in emotional regulation. Naming and expressing experiences allows us to claim some agency in dealing with them.
As we, like Cassian’s desert monks, struggle through our own “long, dark teatime of the soul”, we can name this experience, which is now part of our emotional repertoire.
Jonathan L. Zecher, Research fellow, Australian Catholic University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Recently it was time for something of an overhaul on the motorcycle. This time, I thought that it might also be a good time to revisit Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (it’s been — well, decades since I last picked it up) … while doing some wrenching!
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“Way back in 2014 Los Angeles’ LabXIV released a really pleasant 12″ of lush but minimal and understated electronics. The strength of the material was in the melancholy melodies and the way each song made the most of the small handful of synth and drum parts, splitting the difference deftly between synthpop, minimal and some post-industrial sounds. New EP The Betrayal continues from that template, although some of the sparseness of LabXIV’s previous material has been replaced by a more full-bodied set of synths and drum sounds …”
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