Art Installations for the first LAST festival

June 6-7, San Jose

LAST expo/symposium/festival | All videos of artists and installations
David Glowacki is a Royal Society Research Fellow presently based in San Francisco. He holds joint appointments at Stanford University and the University of Bristol (UK). With a Master of Arts in cultural theory and a PhD in chemical physics, he has a growing international reputation spanning both computational nano-physics and interactive digital art, with a growing number of high-profile publications in both areas. David is also the creator of danceroom Spectroscopy (dS), an interactive digital framework that fuses his multi-disciplinary interests, which has been used to create a dance piece entitled Hidden Fields. dS has been displayed at leading European cultural institutions, including Germany's ZKM Centre for Art and Media, London's Barbican Arts Centre, and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. For more information, see www.glow-wacky.com "Danceroom Spectroscopy" (dS), developed at the Pervasive Media Studio, is part video game, part science visualization, part art installation, and part social experiment. By the end of 2013 dS had already been exhibited to nearly 60,000 people across Europe. Fusing 3d imaging and rigorous quantum mechanics, dS transforms people into energy fields and lets them wander through the nano-quantum world, where they trigger sounds and images.There's no limit on the number of "players", and the more they cooperate, the more engrossing it becomes. The project is supported by Stanford University, Bristol University , EPRSC, and the Pervasive Media Studios. dS orignally launched in spring 2011. It has been presented in large scale public exhibition at the Arnolfini (Bristol, UK), at SxSW, Bristol Harbourside Festival, and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. dS gently coaxes large groups to pay attention to one another and their own collective time scales, moods, feelings, and spirituality. The large the user group, and the more user-user cooperativity, the more captivating the results. In dS, lateral human interaction arises naturally. Contrary to typical video game experiences, if the dS technology goes down, people are left staring at each other - instead of the mass produced plastic shell of a useless console. dS works by real-time 3d image capture of people's motion. The captured images are then processed by a suite of GPU-accelerated algorithms that interpret people's movements as perturbations within a virtual energy field, embedding them within a real-time molecular simulation, where their movement sculpts the molecular dynamics. A suite of on-the-fly analysis methods are then utilised to analyse and subsequently sonify the molecular dynamics. For example, simple methods such as collision detection, along with more complicated methods that involve dynamical fourier analysis, can be combined and interlaced to construct a generative system whereby users can sculpt real-time soundscapes. The sonic interactivity also works in the opposite direction, allowing a musician to select compositional features which are capable of controlling a range of the physical simulation variables. In this talk, we will present the theory that guides system function, describe some of its recent applications in both artistic & scientific domains, and show the system in action in a number of settings.

This is what the "Guardian" had to say about it: "Danceroom Spectroscopy makes the invisible world of atoms visible. An experience called Danceroom Spectroscopy fuses science, music, 3D imaging and dance to bring the very small into view... The invisible dances taking place on tiny scales have profound impacts on our everyday lives - both for good and for ill. For example, understanding the dances of cells, molecules, and atoms allows us to make strides developing important technologies in areas like medicine and mobile communications; however, the same understanding also provides detailed insight into the dramatic impact that our modern lifestyles has on the planet and its atmosphere. For example, the vibrational dance of a CO2 molecule might be invisible, but it's the reason that CO2 is an effective greenhouse gas, leading to visible planetary changes such as forest fires, melting ice caps and rising sea levels... An important part of science is to develop simple and effective ways to think about, visualise and communicate the way that the natural world works. In the realm of the invisible, this is a significant challenge. Communicating and understanding this world requires the active engagement of our imaginations to dream up robust metaphors, analogies and visualisations. With modern science's ability to understand and manipulate matter at the atomic scale, the invisible layers of nature are having an increasing impact on our lives... Spectroscopy refers to a set of tools that scientists use to "see" the invisible. The underlying idea driving dS is that, on a fundamental level, we are essentially fancy energy fields. This simple idea is perhaps one of the most profound conclusions we can draw from modern science's understanding of the invisible world. The microscopic atomic and molecular interactions between us and our environment are fundamentally energetic. Using physics-based molecular models and supercomputing technology, dS lets you see your energy field embedded in a sea of atoms and molecules. As you move, your energy field interacts with these atoms and molecules, generating both sound and images. It's actually not so different from what's happening to you as you sit reading this article: trillions of invisible atmospheric molecules are microscopically battering you and momentarily interacting with your energy field... We've used the dS technology to make a dance performance entitled Hidden Fields, designed to evoke the hidden energy matrix and atomic world that forms the fabric of nature, but is too small for our eyes to see. It's as much a next-generation dance piece as it is an invitation to contemplate the interconnected dynamism of the natural world - from the microscopic to the cosmic - and will hopefully be an inspiration for more attempts to develop our sensitivity to the increasingly visible invisible...

Video introduction | Video clip of the installation
Wes Modes is an arts researcher and artist focused on technology and design based in Santa Cruz, CA. He is an MFA candidate at the University of California Santa Cruz Digital Art and New Media program. He has exhibited his sculpture regionally since 1996. Wes worked in the tech industry for 25 years as a software engineer, systems administrator, and systems architect. His computer systems work includes Silicon Graphics, Adobe, and UCSC, serving as the primary systems architect of the Grateful Dead Archive Online. He is also a performer and community organizer. For more information, please visit modes.io.
Lanier Sammons is a composer, guitarist, recordist, and educator based in Santa Cruz, CA. As a composer, Lanier's music often explores ideas like audience interactivity, improvisation, the intersection of popular and classical musics, and the pairing of electronic and acoustic sound. His works have been featured at SEAMUS, the Spark Festival, the Jubilus Festival, and on EcoSono's Agents Against Agency DVD release. Recently, he served as a Participatory Performing Artist in Residence at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Lanier holds a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from the University of Virginia, where his dissertation focused on audience interactivity within the concert hall. He currently serves as lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay teaching courses on recording technology, composition, and a variety of other topics. For more information, please visit laniersammons.com.
Brent Townshend is an artist and inventor based in Menlo Park, CA and Montr‚al, Quebec. He has a diverse background combining Engineering, Computer Science, Art & Photography, and Biology. Brent received his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, while studying photography as a side pursuit. After doing research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, he started a sequence of hightech companies focussed on signal processing - how to manipulate and process digital data to extract information or improve its visualization. Meanwhile, he continued his photographic explorations. He studied darkroom techniques under Georges FŠvre, who was the personal printer for CartierBresson and printed for Koudelka, Doisneau, and Lartigue. With John Schults of Reuters he learned the realities of photojournalism. He worked on fashion photography with Atelier Chardon Savard in Paris and explored commercial and studio photography with H‚lŠne Vedrenne at the Paris Photographic Institute. Brent has also taught in Engineering and in Computer Science as a Adjunct Professor at McGill University and at Stanford University. He currently holds a post as Visiting Researcher in the Bioengineering department at Stanford where he is doing research in Synthetic Biology. As an inventor with over 40 patents, his combination of science and an artistic purpose was a natural progression. In 2005, he began working on ultrawide angle, high dynamic range digital photography. Using sets of highresolution digital photos to cover a scene both in viewpoint and light intensity, he developed novel processes and software for capturing and displaying images. With representation by Modernbook Gallery in San Francisco, he has exhibited his work in New York, Chicago, Miami, Toronto, and Basel. In 2012, he expanded his repertoire into interactive installations featuring computer vision for motion tracking and generative sound and video. For more information, please visit www.tc.com. " Corelated Space " , subtitled "A Playful Engagement with Light and Sound in Public Space", is a collaboration among Wes Modes, artist, engineer, and UCSC DANM MFA student and arts researcher; Lanier Sammons, Santa Cruz composer and CSUMB faculty; and Brent Townshend, Menlo Park artist, engineer, inventor, and Stanford faculty. When you enter Corelated Space, you are immediately surrounded by playful laser lines on the floor responding to your movement. A musical score also keyed to your movement reverberates through the spartan physical space. Kids and adults dance through the space, experimenting with ways their interactions affect the musical soundscape and laser light. Corelated Space transforms a public space into a playground of sound and light. Concept Sketch for CoRelated Space Corelated Space is a digitallyenhanced environment that immerses participants not in digital space, but embodied space, highlighting the spatiality of participants, their behavior and their relationships with others within that space. Using motion tracking, laser light projection and a generative soundscape, it encourages interactions between participants, visually and sonically transforming a regularly trafficked space. Corelated Space highlights participants' active engagement and experimentation with sound and light, including complex direct and indirect behavior and relationships. The key to Corelated Space is a sophisticated visual tracking system combined with complex data aggregation. The system observes people's movements over time, including moving fast or slow, dancing, standing close, hugging, and synchronizing their movement. Visually and sonically, these observed and inferred behaviors are highlighted with sound and light. Visually, the piece sketches laser lines around and between participants with the thickness, quality, and dynamics of the lines determined by the nature of their participation and the relationships between them. In Corelated Space, sound, light, and your fellow participants are everything. Sonically, the piece draws inspiration from ambient sound, developing the complexity and dynamism of each participant's sonic "voice" as they interact within the space. A conductor subsystem leads the piece through a series of subtle scenes. The nature of the piece remains the same, but some of the details change. For instance, perhaps only the most active participants are highlighted, or perhaps only the most quiescent. Perhaps, in one movement, the piece creates a connector between people who have no connection already, encouraging interactions between strangers. Corelated Space is a collaboration between artists Wes Modes, Brent Townshend, and Lanier Sammons. Modes has 30 years in the tech industry, is a practicing visual and digital artist, and Digital Art and New Media MFA student. Townshend is a longtime engineer and inventor with numerous patents to his name, a photographer and new media artist, and Stanford PhD and faculty. Sammons is an experimental sound artist with numerous exhibitions, awards, and fellowships, and CSUMB faculty. Corelated Space is an innovative new media work. Each of the major systems of the piece - the playful laser light sketches, the hightech motion tracking system, and the generative musical soundscape - break new technical ground. However, the real joy of CoRelated Space will be watching children and grownups playfully moving through the space and with each other in response to the dance of light and sound. Video introduction | Another introduction
Emily Martinez is a Cuban-born artist working with digital and networked media. Her recent practice and research interests examine the relationship between media, memory, and catastrophe; temporality and the digital archive; and nonrepresentational forms of subjectivity as they arise from within the multiplicities of narratives inherent to globally networked societies. She received her M.F.A. in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2012. Currently lives and works in Los Angeles. " AntiApocalypse " explores how the embodiment of memory in networked media influences how we re/ co/ create our worlds and our selves. The project creates an immersive digital cinema in which the mindbody of the spectator bares the task of enacting "worlds" as mediated by an EEG braincomputer interface, custom software, and a digital video database composed entirely of appropriated web content reassembled as animated loops and remixed in realtime by their fluctuating brainwave rhythms. Oscillating between visual perception and mental observation, the viewer navigates a labyrinth of multiple, discontinuous, collective memories, exploring the disorienting and transformative liminal spaces between these virtual records, their material manifestations, and psychic traces.
A custom program created in MAX/MSP/Jitter functions like a two channel video mixer set to crossfade indefinitely. Video content is selected according to the viewer's brainwave state measured in realtime by an electroencephalograph (EEG) braincomputer interface. As the viewer's quality of in/ attention shifts in response to the content they are witnessing, they gain or lose access to different parts of the video database, making each "screening" both idiosyncratic and unique. Video introduction | Another introduction
Erich Richter is an object maker and performance artist with a background in computer science. He holds a BFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts and works in conceptually oriented art practices. His formal art education began late in life, having worked primarily as a craft artist for over two decades. He is a wrestler, an honorary lifetime member of the Federation of Gay Games, and also studied contemporary music at a conservatory in Los Angeles in the early 80's. His work encompasses interests in cultural anthropology, language, history, and the technological mediation of 21st century life. "Chant" is a participatory installation consisting of a reflecting pool, partially submerged speakers, and spoken audio selections of short spiritual texts. Selections are chosen and submitted by the people both within the exhibition and throughout the world via text messaging. Their phones become their pulpit. Their messages are then fed into the pool to be translated from language to language through an online translator. Voices are seen in the water and reverberate through the space as they are translated out loud from language to language. With each new iteration of the text the meaning changes; sometimes only slightly, often with the introduction of some new idea that reflects the cultural understanding inherently embedded in words and idiom. Video introduction
Eve Warnock is a multimedia artist who melds ancient techniques of art-making with modern technologies. She is a costume and set designer as well as a director for live performances and films. eve earned a BA in Arts and Humanities from The Ohio State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California Santa Cruz's Digital Arts and New Media program. eve is co-creator of Queen Mae and the Bells, a modern opera troupe that integrates electronics and projection in costume and engineered instruments. She is the director of Seekago, a series of five experimental films that incorporates tactics of live performance with film techniques and new medias. She is also director of multiple interactive public performance pieces. Speakers, Denizen, and Seek, are a few examples. Her current project is HERD an interdisciplinary, multi-platform, multi-media extravaganza researching animal and human herding behaviors. Her work explores the boundaries of human and animal relationships, studying primitive natures as a way to reconnect humans with each other and to the animal kingdom. Her work has been shown all over the United States in diverse venues: from the street to the museum, from the gallery to the guerilla.
Kate Harrington is Creative Director at LUDIKA, where she designs unique collaborative art and game experiences that connect, educate, and inspire action. She combines 15 years in business operations, project management, and event production with passion-based proficiencies in personal development, creativity, and group facilitation to do what she loves - collaborate with global change-makers to address social challenges in a playful yet purposeful way. Kate leverages the innately human qualities of art, play, and spontaneous co-creation to spark "social change projects." Kate recently spent ten months in Indonesia, where she co-produced the third annual, highly-acclaimed TEDxUbud. Now back in the States, she is reveling in the fertile and innovative world that is the San Francisco Bay Area. Current projects include HERD (a public performance series rooted in an interactive education curricula and community events), and the Zero1 American Arts Incubator (an international creative arts exchange program funded by the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs). " Emergence ", a sub-project of HERD, is a multi-media performance that looks at the emergence of self-organized systems adapting to the human impacts on our aquatic ecosystems. In a fantastical multi-media performance, eve Warnock and LUDIKA will bring the consequences of a polluted ocean to life with the emergence of an evolved self-organized species from our oceans. Using researched-based algorithms to inform movement, these species will evolve and transform in front of the audience. Compelling costumes and sets, projections and sounds from Nathan Ober's automaton instrument installation Samadhi will allow these organisms to dwell, feed, and reproduce among us. Video introduction
Ian Winters is a video/media artist working at the intersections of performance, architectural form, and technology and time-based media to explore the complex relations between physicality, technology, and place, often in collaborations with composers and choreographers to create both staged and open-ended media environments through performance, visual and acoustic media. Winters trained in photography, video/film and performance at SMFA-Boston and Tufts University, and post-graduate training in architecture.Full bio at www.ianwinters.com/bio.html. " Horizon Line " explores the perpetually visible, but unreachable space of the horizon line - that destination that is conceptually a boundary and a gate, a space one longs to pass through, yet can never reach. At the heart of this installation is an interest in the emotional resonance of imagery and sound at the boundaries of referential versus abstract visual/audible perception. The original installation at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program from April 8th to 10th, 2013 showed the first working model / prototype of the Horizon-line project. Research questions include : How can investigations of site, place and moment, which have particular associations and connotations, be abstracted and distilled the pure elements - of light and sound - which form their essential structure? How much of a `trace' is left by the connotative reality in which we experience them? At what point is the `trace' lost - allowing the experience of that place / moment to pass beyond the horizon? This project uses a series of 90x8LED pixels arrays using the inexpensive but fussy WS2811 chip with control provided by the new Teensy 3.0 microcontroller, and relying on Paul Stoffregen's Octows2811 library for frame-syncable video playback. Live infrared video is being processed through isadora, and ultimately fed to the Teensy array. Much of the work behind this prototype was to work out technical feasibility around issues of 1. scaling to large public art / gallery context, 2. dealing with power issues- this installation is run solely off of battery power, and the larger installation is envisioned to run off power collected on site during the day. Video introduction | and another introduction " Vigil " is a project in the early research phase of development. It grows out of a research presentation and paper for the 2013 ISEA festival around the use of mobile phone motion sensor technology in interactive and distributed/ telematics performance. The vigil project explores ideas of our physical / kinesthetic experience of loss. Participants are asked to stand in a silent vigil or meditation for 15 minutes, while motion sensors on the heart or head observe their slight sway. That sway is used to generate a slowly fading line drawing tracking their movement and breath (and those of every other participant world wide). Drawing on many traditional memorial & funeral practices around the world the project explores the idea of standing vigil by creating a year long networked installation with 3 to 6 physical locations around the world in order to keep a year's watch - at least one person, awake, in a standing meditation on someone that they have lost. Video introduction | Video clip of the installation
Sean McGowen, Ian Ayyad, Richard Vallejos, Joel Horne are members of OpenLab. The OpenLab Network targets a complex education issue of national significance regarding the ability of art and science researchers to collaborate on research endeavors. The goal of the OpenLab Network is to help change the current status by providing shared research facilities and create a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry. The OpenLab Network project is currently pursuing the physical development of new collaborative laboratories on campus as spaces to foster this research and establish an on-line social networking system for faculty and students to create projects. Laboratories and studios in both the arts and the sciences will be accessible to users in the OpenLab Network. Within this immersive environment, we will conduct research to acquire skills and knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries between science, education, and the arts while sharing expertise in collaborative research methodologies. "BioSensing Garden" is a sculptural garden and water-droplet fountain that visualizes data from a Fitbit, (an exercise tracking device). The fountain is made from a re-purposed printer that drips water onto a pane of tilted glass. The droplets are timed and placed precisely so that they create visualize the data from the fitbit as they fall. Imagery will be projected onto the droplet patterns as they fall onto a garden below. The data droplets are the sole source of water for the plants and so their health is a direct reflection of the amount of exercise from the participant. Team: Sean McGowen, Ian Ayyad, Richard Vallejos, Joel Horne.
Gene Felice and David Kant are members of OpenLab. OpenLab is a new research initiative at the University of California Santa Cruz. The OpenLab Network targets a complex education issue of national significance regarding the ability of art and science researchers to collaborate on research endeavors. The goal of the OpenLab Network is to help change the current status by providing shared research facilities and create a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry. The OpenLab Network project is currently pursuing the physical development of new collaborative laboratories on campus as spaces to foster this research and establish an on-line social networking system for faculty and students to create projects. Laboratories and studios in both the arts and the sciences will be accessible to users in the OpenLab Network. Within this immersive environment, we will conduct research to acquire skills and knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries between science, education, and the arts while sharing expertise in collaborative research methodologies. "Coactive Systems" is a new collaboration between artists Gene A. Felice II & David Kant. Coactive Systems v.1 is a multi-sensory intervention exploring the relationships between human and non-human communities. This project investigates new modes of interspecies storytelling using sound, light and bodies. Bioluminescent phytoplankton are the subject of our research. These living systems are the base of our ocean and fresh water food webs, producing half the world's oxygen and absorbing 1/3rd of our planet's CO2. They also inspire new modes of art and science collaboration. Our symbiotic relationships with these living systems that we exist within become inspiration through explorations of the air that we breathe, the food that we eat and the worlds that we create.
Jennifer Parker is an Associate Professor of Art and Digital Arts and New Media at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her research is rooted in sculpture, interactive and kinetic art, and cross-disciplinary and collaborative research. Current and past projects explore new methodologies for art making that engage art and science thinking. She is co-founder and director of The OpenLab Network at UCSC and has been working with Barney Hyanes since 2008 developing the SonicSENSE interactive art platform. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Local venues include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Camerawork; The Lab; Gray Area Foundation for the Arts; Kala Art Institute; and ZER01:10SJ Biennial.
Barney Haynes has been working in the fields of video art, performance, reactive installation, and interactive media for 30 years. In his art he has adopted an iterative approach to media making, recombining themes and industrial surplus into media machines that evolve and mutate.He is a a Professor at the California College of Art in Interdisciplinary Studies, Sculpture, and Fine Art. He has received numerous grants, awards and honors, including but not limited to the California Arts Council Fellowship; University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), The Arts Research Institute, and the Gerbode Foundation Grant, CCA. His work has been exhibited throughout the Bay Area and internationally in the Czech Republic, Spain, the Netherlands, and throughout Germany. "SoundPool", featuring sound design by Andre Marquetti, is an interactive sound installation for viewers to dynamically interact with the Oakland Museum of California's Natural Sounds archive. The archive of audio recordings is a comprehensive collection of nature sounds with an emphasis on California species and environments. It includes the sounds of specific insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, as well as natural, ambient soundscapes. Video introduction
Peter Foucault creates works on paper, videos, and installations that are fueled by his love of drawing and mark making. He has created a series of Drawing-Projects, which utilize systems developed by the artist that produce complex abstract compositions. At the root of these projects is a constant tension between control and the loss of control. Viewer interactivity plays an integral part in his drawing installations, large-scale artworks in which participants influence the outcome of a drawing that is created by a small robot over the duration of an event or exhibition. His work is concept driven, and often utilizes objects that reference printmaking and multiplicities. Foucault has participated in numerous exhibitions nationwide, with recent solo shows at K. Imperial Fine Art, Room Gallery, the SFMOMA Caf‚, and the Richmond Art Center (Richmond, CA). His work has been included in group shows at Room Gallery, the Torrance Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Marine Contemporary (Santa Monica, CA), the Smithsonian Institutes' Freer and Sackler Gallery, Kit Schulte Contemporary (Berlin, Germany), The University of Salford (Manchester, England), and The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA). Between 2007-2011 his artwork was included in the Art Now Fair Miami Beach, the Bridge Art Fair New York and Miami Beach, the AAF in New York, and the Scope Art Fair Miami Beach. His interactive robotic drawing installations have been presented at The NASA Aimes Research Center, The Lab (San Francisco), Robert Berman E6 Gallery (San Francisco, CA), the Seattle Next50 (Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Seattle Worlds Fair), and the Zero1 Art and Technology Fair (San Jose, CA). In 2010 Foucault received funding from the Creative Work Fund, and a grant from the City of San Jose Public Art Program, and in 2012 he was awarded grants from the City of Oakland's Cultural Funding Program, US Bank, and the Seattle Center Foundation. In 2013 he received a grant from the Zellerbach Family Foundation. Foucault has recently presented lectures at Stanford University, City College, San Francisco University and the SETI Institute (Mountain View, CA). In addition to his own practice, Foucault is the Co-Founder of the Mobile Arts Platform (MAP), a Bay Area based artmaking and curatorial team that creates interactive "pop-up" mobile exhibitions. Foucault's work has been reviewed in The San Francisco Chronicle, The SF Weekly (Pick of the Week), ArtWeek, Wired Magazine, Stretcher Magazine, and Artnet Magazine. In April 2009 his drawing Four Square was featured on the Cover of California Home and Design Magazine. Foucault's work is represented by K. Imperial Fine Art (San Francisco, CA) and Room Gallery (Mill Valley, CA). Selected works are available through the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, Micaela Gallery (Alamo, CA), Chandler Fine Art in San Francisco and Kit Schulte Contemporary in Berlin. He lives and works in Oakland, CA. "Attraction/Repulsion: Longwave" is an an interactive robotic drawing installation. Viewers interact with a small sensor driven robot to influence the outcome of a large-scale drawing composition that will be created on-site at the LAST Festival. Outer sound pieces that will be occurring simultaneously in the space will also influence the outcome of the drawing creating a multi-artist collaboration/feedback loop.
Robert Edgar is a digital media producer presently living in the Bay area. Robert creates and employs software engines to examine mediated artifacts forged at his zone of proximal development. His engines include Memory Theatre One (1985), Living Cinema (1988), Sand, or How Computers Dream of Truth in Cinema (1992), Memory Theatre Two (2003), and Simultaneous Opposites (presently under development). He holds an MFA from Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts, presently works at Stanford University, and teaches at the Art Institute of Sunnyvale. "Mergeemerge" is an installation that locates the Simultaneous Opposites image stream so that it is coterminous with the 3D reflection of the viewer's face, breaking and mixing it so that the personal and intimate is buried and uncovered as one stares. The result is an extended moment when one can observe one's own perceptual system as it tries to make sense. Video introduction | video clip of the installation
Yuan-Yi Fan is currently a PhD Candidate in Media Arts and Technology, University of California Santa Barbara, USA. His current research focuses on interactive techniques for audience participation. During his doctoral studies, he worked as a research intern at Nokia Research Center, a g-speak engineer intern at Oblong Industries Inc., and a design intern at Nokia Advanced Design Studio. Before UCSB, He worked at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and Ultrasound Imaging Lab in Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University. He received MS in Biomedical Engineering at National Yang Ming University and BS in Mechanical and Electro-mechanical Engineering at National Sun Yat-Sen University, both from Taiwan. As a multimedia artist, his work was commissioned by ZERO1 with gracious support from the James Irvine Foundation. His works were also introduced in various international publications and venues, including Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), ISEA, IEEE VIS Arts Program, Mindshare LA, KCRW's Design and Architecture, and NIMEs. "Qi-Visualizer" is an interactive installation that translates ineffable dialogues of the heart with the human body into a collective poetry via spectator participation using mobile biometrics. Qi is an ancient concept of life energy in various cultures and pulse-examination is one of the techniques used to translate tactile perception of pulsation into poetic descriptions of pulse morphology. In addition to pulse, flow, and wave concepts used to understand energy transmission in human body, the resonance perspective has recently been introduced to explain that the harmonic spectrum of pulse wave is a result of the heart output and the matching condition of the human body. Inspired by the poetic descriptions of pulse morphology and the elegant harmonics on the pulse spectrum, my Form of Resonance series (2010 - Present) attempts to address the link between the harmonics and Qi by translating data into visual, sonic, and architectural studies. In my previous studies, the data was captured and presented through custom synchronous and asynchronous technological systems. Informed by these experiments, I believe spectrogram is the most effective visual language to invoke broader perception of Qi across cultures and disciplines. As the current project of my Form of Resonance series, Qi-Visualizer aims to amplify such a translation through visualizing pulse spectrograms collected from the spectators with spatial sound. The data is captured using a smartphone's camera as a pulse oximeter. Significance of this project may be conceived as a new process shifting tactile-textual translations in the pulse examination to imaging-visual transformations of the pulse spectrograms among spectators. Similar to voiceprint, a heart rate harmonic signature in a spectrogram is seen as an artistic interpretation of Qi in this installation. Video introduction | Video clip of the installation and | another video clip of the installation
Kine-tech Arts is a collective of artists and scientists exploring possibility in live performance through collaborative creativity, founded and directed by Weidong Yang and Daiane Lopes da Silva in January 2013 in San Francisco. Aside from creating shows and installations, Kinetech arts holds a weekly lab at KUNST-STOFF arts open to all interested participants to explore technology, dance, and visual art. "Time Bubble" What if a wave of hand opens up a bubble and brings you back the past? Time Bubble is a live video installation that tinkers with the layering of past and present. Areas of active motion reveal time bubbles: the more you move, the further you see into the past. Real time motion opens up a time bubble and the now will be revealed through the bubbles in the future. This interplay of past and present relates to the concept of historical body - that past experiences accumulate within the body and guide one's present. Even if the consequences of previous actions are not immediately apparent, they inform the course of one's future and manifest in how one witnesses the present. Video introduction | Video clip of the installation
Amy Ho builds video and spatial installations that bring attention to our existence as both physical and psychological beings. She received her undergraduate degree in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and her MFA from Mills College. Amy was selected for the ProArts Gallery 2x2 Solos series in 2012, and is a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artists Grant for 2013. Amy is currently doing a fellowship residency at Kala Art Institute and will be doing residencies at the Lucid Foundation, Studio Kura and Youkobo Art Space later in 2014. She currently works and lives in the Bay Area and is represented by Chandra Cerrito Contemporary. " Passing " is a projection work that plays with our perspective of the windows outside the gallery space. Passing reimagines the windows as passageways into imaginary tunnels. To create the work, images of miniature tunnels are photographed and rear projected on the windows.
Leona Hu is an Interactive and Product Designer currently working in the San Francisco Bay Area. She specializes in Interaction and Visual design in realms of mobile applications, software, web, architecture, installations, lighting, and data visualization. Her architectural design background gives her a strong sensibility and particular interest in designing products that convey user interaction between human, technology and space. From paper to pixel, Leona challenges the limits of interaction design to humanize technologies for people's everyday lives. For more information, please visit whoisleona.com.
Matt Storus is a UX Designer currently exploring the future of Wearable Technology with the Samsung Mobile Lab in San Francisco. With an academic and professional background in Architecture, Matt's work seeks to orchestrate spatial, social, and digital systems into powerful user experiences. Matt has an MArch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has worked on architecture projects in China, Europe, Canada and the US.
Blake Hudelson is a designer based in San Francisco. With an interest in new formulations of social space, Blake has spent time studying and traveling to six continents, and working in the disciplines of architecture, technology, and urbanism. Blake trained in architecture and urban planning at CCA and Cal Poly-SLO. " Reverie " is an interactive installation that explores the mystique of classical music conducting. Visitors are given headphones to listen to a series of classical pieces and are guided to conduct in front of a LEAP Motion sensor. The sensor captures the arm gestures of participants, then a custom-designed program generates the data into a large projection of geometric patterns. Visitor's horizontal and vertical movements define scale, color, and frequency of the images. The installation attempts to change people's passive-listening behavior by visualizing sound and producing an impromptu art show. Video introduction
Kristen Gillette "Sound Relief" is an interactive sound and video installation that generates large scale, responsive topographies for participants to physically navigate and alter. As people contribute noise to the installation space, they can affect and control different attributes of the generated landscapes, including elevation, location, depth, detail and distortion. The geographies described in these relief maps are both fantastic and possible. They convey multiple levels of information and visual data via their cartographic language and the image mosaic system used to create them. Because each relief map is constructed of hundreds of smaller image blocks that are actually different physical elements of glaciers, the viewer is presented with the opportunity to simultaneously explore micro and macro visuals, concepts and ideas. Sound Relief focuses on glacial landscapes because of their status as a highly critical geography. These actual spaces - especially those that are in "retreat" - are sites of multiple meanings, cause and effect and worldwide impact in regards to global climate change, yet are far out of reach for most people. Sound Relief offers viewers a chance to experience these sites from dual frameworks and to meditate on different levels of human intervention, destruction, disruption and restoration. Video introduction
Nathan Ober is a new media artist whose work crosses disciplines from installation and performance to video and sound. His interdisciplinary works examine concepts of human perception and natural phenomena, sound as vibration, time and space, and the finite versus the infinite. Working with multiple facets of technology, he creates immersive installations that intend to pervade the viewers senses. His current research is focused on astronomy and astrophysics, which deal with techniques of sonification and processes that attempt to expose our innate connection to the universe. His latest project entitled the "Transfluent Orchestra" is a sound installation composed of traditional Hindu and Buddhist instruments mechanized to perform with or without human interaction. The piece has been exhibited as a stand-alone installation, used in live performance and even adapted to create music compositions automated by forces of the natural world. Nathan's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with over 30 group and solo shows. In 2009 he moved to New Delhi, India to become program director of Visual Communication and Interactive Media Design at Raffles Millennium International, later moving on to Colombo, Sri Lanka where he helped start up a second new design campus. Nathaniel is currently pursuing his MFA in the Digital Art and New Media program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Samadhi " is the "soundtrack" for HERD Emergence