IC monthly report: October 2013 Guestlecture
The semester has started only one month ago, the schedule is pretty tough, and we already lots of presentation and guestlectures, four in just one month! Here we are with a little resume and some infos about our guests.
Prof. Jo Kazuhiro is a lecturer of our partner university IAMAS (JP), he is dealing with sound design and interaction design, as well as a certain DIY approach.
“I have suggested to change the gramophone from a reproductive instrument to a productive one, so that on a record without prior acoustic information, the acoustic information, the acoustic phenomenon itself originates by engraving the necessary Ritschriftreihen (etched grooves).” [Moholy-Nagy, 1923]
Professor Kazuhiro took really seriously Moholy-Nagy’s suggestion and developed a way for realizing engraved paper-sheets that carry musical information, that could be heard if read with a gramophone. He creates artificially waveforms with digital tools like Adobe Illustrator. The wave is engraved on a thin cardboard-sheet and then played exactly as if it was a vinyl, with the only difference that, technically, the latter one is not a “record”. A thin and delicate support carries sound to which is added a particular scratchy noise really fitting with the paper medium itself. He also developed the way of doing it with already existing sounds: he cuts on the vinyl the spectrogram of the sound with the same technique and afterward we can listen a low-quality and screechy version of the original sound.
– How to make a record without prior acoustic information
– Laser Cut Record (version)
Prof. Hiroyuki Une is associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Design and Sociology at Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University.
He has been at Interface Cultures as a visiting professor for a month and had the chance to get in touch with some students of us and follow some of our classes.
He gave us an introduction of his method for teaching Object-Oriented programming, based on giving the students a task as the production of a simple videogame, throughout he is able to approach different levels of complexity: from the very first introduction on how the code works, to some tricks related to code and how to organize a structure of shared classes and methods. In 90 minutes he gave a really clear overview of his teaching practice, as well as a brief mention of another research he’s doing: the use of machine-learning techniques to develop better message-routing strategies on internet.
http://www.hkg.ac.jp/html/english/index.html
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ieejeiss/126/7/126_7_818/_article
Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand presented us their impressive practice on the border between artistic and scientific approach.
They are one of the clear example how to combine the two discipline; they collaborate with many universities and research institutes, where they get facilities and equipment for their complex setups. Their projects use liquids and gases that are stimulated through forces as sound and magnetism to reach the critical point where the physical stability of the substance is not balanced anymore but still not completely destroyed.
In this very specific configuration the notions of space and time are broken apart and the perception of the physical world is completely different from the normal one. Evelina and Dmitry are working also in a restricted scale: the mesoscopic one. It generally deals on an atomic scale, from a single atom until a whole molecule. At this size matter is affected from both classical and quantum mechanic, therefore the results of applied forces are particularly surprising. The couple of artist is then dealing with this particular and inspiring size and behaviors of matter and use them to create aesthetic and material configurations, visualizing completely new reactions and changing the perception of the audience in a very radical way.
http://www.portablepalace.com/
Last but not least, Prof Maria Luiza Fragoso from Nanolab Brasil was at IC. She presented her practice and some project going on in Brazil, mainly about Artistic interfaces with natural/organic elements in telematic environments.
This is an important issue in her practice located between art, science, folklore and telecommunication processes. According to her position, technology in art should be also used in order to preserve tradition and grow the awareness of people about their mutual needs and potential. She works often with natives and populations that are still living in the jungle, giving them the possibility to acquire an academic education also helping them to reach the minimum level of instruction required to apply in the university. Besides that, she runs project about the tradition of those populations, expressing rituals into multimedia installation. She works with experimental telecommunication systems whose aim is to give awareness of environmental issues and are also using organic or hybrid interfaces.
Prof. Fragoso introduced also Hyperorganicos, an international symposium and open lab for research about art, ibridation and bio-telematics where people are gathering physically and online and share and develop together tools and ideas.
