from the working group description:

Imagine a garden of dream flowers, powered by duracell, made of abandoned Starbucks coffee cups, styrofoam cubes cut from the latest iMac packing materials, a brain made in Italy, a blossom made by 1/2 Tod 1/2 Bot. The flowers glow with an eerie pulsating glow, sending secret missives across a darkened room. Some flowers horde their individuality, resisting attempts to transform, to change. Others broadcast their distinctive natures broadly, encouraging nearby flowers to go with them, to be like them. Still others promiscuously adopt the patterns of others, reproducing, syncing, connecting. They live they die. The garden flourishes it declines.

In this group, workshop participants will build electronic flowers using some pre-assembled electronic components and craft materials (paper cups, styrofoam, cardboard, etc.) These flowers ‘talk’ to one another using infrared light patterns and, in doing so, gain and expend energy. They can be programmed in various ways – to be more open or more closed, more aggressive or more sharing – which has an effect on each flower’s own individual survival as well as the survival of the garden as a whole. In addition to resulting in what I hope will be an interesting visual display, the project will serve to open and inform discussions relevant to the topic of ‘walled garden’. Themes include questions about the porosity of boundaries, the necessity for both inclusion and exclusion as part of community, the power of exchange, and so forth.

Working in a small group of about 5 participants, Matt brought pre-prepared units: Arduino boards with infra-red light and receiver for sending messages and a three colored light blinker for displaying the different patterns exchanged. The software was ready programmed and only needed minimal changes in code to try out the different settings.

We experimented with a very simple network, sending a message (ID, pattern, ID) out to whoever is listening, receiving patterns when listening, and displaying patterns according to change. The parameters were the amount of time spent listening, the amount of times sending a pattern, and the relative values gained or lost in this process. A starting value of ‘energy’ was defined. Changing these parameters determined the balance of the group, whether one dominates or looses too much energy. 

3 concepts of exchange and value were tested, the gift economy, where one accepts a new pattern and changes, the info commons, where one only changes if the pattern is new, and the info neighborhood, where a memory is built in and will only change is the pattern is different from the last three.  In the gift economy value = exchange, in the info commons value = difference. The difference in the exchange of patterns however reached equilibrium, or homogeneity very quickly, and the only way out of this was a new input from outside. This was tested with the idea of a wall, a boundary, a walled garden with some flowers inside and others outside.

Important observations from playing with these simple networks:

• To keep change available, one has to collaborate, be able to predict the onset of homogeneity because this means the imminent death of the whole garden. Given this realization one has to be prepared to ask for or exchange patterns before patterns become homogenous, or set up a system which accepts input from outside, or add noise to the system (which will be less predictable).
• Each node in the network is individual creating an uneven, unbalanced system (equal nodes, if possible, would make an unreal network). [NB I supposed both these last points are linked to the onset of chaos and chaos theory.]
• Messages have content, they carry information that has varying value of its own, which means that the value is linked to the content of the message, not to an external value parameter such as simply sending and receiving. 
• Can data itself be both the communication, the message and the carrier? This would stop the splitting of content from carrier. [What are the theories on this?][It reminds me too of the Meta-Orchestra work with exchanging large amounts of complex performance and musical data made available on a network, and how this changes musical ideas of collaboration within a group. I should look also at the work of The Hub here for example.]

Re-Active Platform multimedia and performance group, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Goals:

• To develop an understanding of the relationship between scores, sound, environment and performance.
• To use this concept as the framework for proposing a new work whether intervention, performance or installation.
• To develop a working Scorescape that translates navigation data into sonic and/or visual media for a performance or installation.

Introduction: 

My concept of a Scorescape arose from a need to grasp relationships between sound and image, environment and communication, performance and installation, composer and audience. Working with techniques and concepts of both navigation and audio-visual performance, I developed two projects, Taking Soundings (KHM fellow 2006) and Sun Run Sun / Satellite Sounders (Montevideo/STEIM Residency 2008) that explore these ideas of score, landscape and the position of the spectator within them. Taking Soundings turned GPS data into sounds and images live, Sun Run Sun is a collection of pieces in different formats centered around the Satellite Sounders, small portable instruments that transform the position and motion of the GPS satellites in the sky into live sound related to the participants movement. By experimenting with the conceptual context and technical development issues around these two works, Scorescapes establishes an open platform to shape new works and new ideas.

Theory:

As a conceptual tool we will use a radically expanded notion of the score. Conventional musical scores are characterized by static notation, enclosed spaces, predefined roles of composer performer and audience, an object kept in a library. How can this be made relevant to contemporary performance practices with new technologies? It starts with the experiments that treated the score a medium of communication, in early performance art as a conceptualization of action and interpretation. In relation to media theory, the score can be seen as a medium that influences and carries meaning from a site to a source of reception. The score is fundamentally an intermediary between audio and visual, and subject to interpretation, whether human or technical.

Practice: 

As a technical tool to explore these ideas we will gather data from the Global Positioning System (GPS). We will examine the raw NMEA data (National Marine Electronics Association) that we receive to try to understand the technical principles of satellite navigation and the relation to earlier forms of celestial and coastal navigation. We will then select parts of the data, for example the longitude and latitude, the elevation and azimuth, the calculated speed and altitude; and map these to sound processes, visual processes or other forms. To do this we will use the NMEA data parser in PureData (PD) or Max/MSP.

Process: 

• In the sonification and visualisation of data, the technical translation of numbers into sound, can we identify the points where interpretation is needed and where the imagination takes over?
• When collecting streams of data about our location in space, can we interpret this data as a score, as sonic or visual maps, that heighten our embodied experience of being in environment?
• What choices do we make when translating numbers in sound and image?  It is important to consider this mapping in terms of the conceptual provocations of the score and implications for performance or exhibition.
• Think of these as live scores to be made available to others, provocations of action, of discussion, of performance. When making the visual or sonic summary of each score – think what the most important features are for communication, what makes your piece what it is?

Deliver: 

We will work in small groups so that we can try to achieve a practical result by the end of the day. We will have small test pieces up and running, and a sketch outline of ideas for a performance or exhibition work using what was touched on in the workshop. These will be open source, open to modification, re-use and re-interpretation and will be uploaded as a small collection of score sketches online.

Equipment:

• Computers running either Max/MSP+Jitter 5 and/or PureData
• GPS NMEA data parser in Max/MSP and/or PD
• Bluetooth GPS (to input live to the computer)
• Projector and sound system to present the works to each other

Timing:

• 11:00 Satellite Sounder walks
• 11:30 Presentation and discussion led by Yolande
• 12:30 NMEA parsers and data
• 13:00 lunch – decide on an idea/approach
• 14:00 Practice, programming, testing
• 15:00 Presentation/performance of new Scorescapes
• 16:00 end

Links / References:

http://sunrunsun.nimk.nl

http://www.macba.es/uploads/20080617/Programa_PDF_ENG.pdf

http://www.yolandeharris.net

http://www.scorescapes.net

others to follow