capturing (4)

Art.On.Wires Festival Oslo 2010 - day 2

May 11th

As a festival like this, or maybe every festival, it is always a contact-making-connections-pool.

A possibility to get to know other fields of art/artists which could or do collaborate in order to create new art (pieces).
Along those lines the day yesterday ended in an open space introducing the people who give the workshops.
Everyone who was interested in talking a little about their work, their art-approach, projects etc. got a microphone in his/her hand and could give a glimpse into their life to the audience.

Today we(*) started our workshop for interactive environments. Talking about recent projects and showing some video material to expose the listener to some ways of making use of the system/environment.
I was talking about the need of finding a common working-language. Just by trying to understand the other participating project-developer. Which means, everyone creating a performance (for instance) should move a little in the interactive space, should look over the shoulder of the musician, try to comprehend the graphic program or install the camera system. Within this crossing the boarders you bring everyone to a point of equality. There you have a chance of a communication which eventually will lead to an artistic output with hopefully some semantic comprehensible line for the audience.


Across the hall where the festival happens, Alexander Carot ( http://www.carot.de/ ) is giving his workshop on a software he developed to enable musicians to rehears and perform together without meeting in real person. Having the problem of delivering the sound with a delay he invented his software “Soundjack” ( http://www.soundjack.eu ).


Another interesting workshop deals with kids toys. Through soldering components together they create the weirdest sounds. After everything is put together, you just press buttons and the sounds come out of a toy. Very funny one.
( http://www.daal.at/ )

After a very intriguing key note by Mark Coniglio about his work, he is giving a workshop on the software Isabora, which he invented himself.

In his lecture he was talking about some art pieces which work with the matter of fact that we are the number one in our life.

I am - is the most used expression in Skype chat.

When we use interactive environments we are fascinated by the music I can create because I move (or graphics etc).

Mark introduced us to one of his recent works "loopdiver". Loopdiver was created with the Isadora software.

They basically filmed a dance phrase from 6 different ankles and then cut them apart and together in all possible orders. In addition they put loops on top with different durations and so on.

At the end, the dancer had to learn what they created with the software.

( http://www.troikaranch.org/vid-loopDiver.html )


In one corner you could see a huge table with stooped people around again soldering something together. The goal was to built a small LED Gadget/Screen with a USB connection which can be fed with any information you want. Some of the components just need to get a software, which has yet to be written.

( http://www.daal.at/ )


Before dinner time I was sitting together with some people and Frode Volden (docent for cognitive psychology and human interface design at Gjøvik university) for a so called focus talk.

The question to discuss was on perception of quality. What does it mean to us. How do we use it in a artist approach.

This focus talk is used as a platform to develop a new vocabulary in the field of audio-visual cognition in order to find a way to measure quality. To install parameters and make technology/interfaces more effective, better designed for an intuitive use, to simply define it with its own words/vocabulary.

A few statements shall be listed here


- in the moment there is human energy invested it has a high level of quality

- everything containing passion has high quality

- that would be nice

- it is a matter of (expert) knowledge if you receive something as high or low or no quality

- it's a matter of content

- don't mix high and low quality components

- but "south park" does it

- does technology helps to raise the level of quality?

- depends on the use of it

- restrictions within the use of technologies can be useful


and so on.

Frode Volden was mostly listening, making some notes and asking some questions.

Even that we all came from a very different background (musician, dancer, wearable LED artist, VJ, programmer) we were able to talk on an equal level. We made similar experiences and so had a platform of communication in a high quality ;-)


After dinner there will be a concert with Alexander Carot.

http://www.carot.de/




(*)
We is:
Marko Ritter - VVVV programmer - http://blog.intolight.de
Valérie-Françoise Vogt - graphic design - http://veevee.de
Jacob Korn - musician (Abelton, Max 4life) - http://www.jacobkorn.de/
Johanna Roggan - dancer, choreographer - www.moveonit.net
Read more…
May 10th
A new laboratory-like festival has been born. In Oslo, Norway. Out of nothing Dr. Alexander Eichhorn ( http://www.dance-tech.net/profile/echa ) organized a whole festival by himself. Inviting artists (dancers/choreographers, musicians, code-poets, interior designer, visual designer), programmer, nerds as well as students from the university Oslo to lead workshops in the wide field of media art.

Introduction to OpenFrameworks, Motion Capture Systems and Techniques, BoBo – Gadgetto, Isadora – Advanced Features Quick Boot, Using Interactive Environments for Performance (dance, visuals, music), Telematic Interaction – How physical and technical restrictions determine artistic consequences, Systematic Understanding of Music.

http://art-on-wires.org/workshops


After a nice long ride from Dresden, Germany to Oslo, we(*) arrived with a lot of equipment for the workshop we're going to give. Using Interactive Environments for Performance (dance, visuals, music).
A warm atmosphere and friendly people were welcoming us.
On Sunday and today we set up the festival venue at the Kanonenhallen and due to the fact that there are not so many people from the "outside" (people who would just come to take a workshop) have signed in and all the workshop-leaders are wanting to go to the other workshops as well, we decided not to have the workshops overlapping, but giving space that everyone could participate in every workshop and/or to tinker on or with something...

This is how we started today. With some setting up, a nice lunch and a short introduction speech from Dr. Eichhorn.
Now people listen to the OpenFramework lecture and already implementing codes.
Mark Coniglio ( http://www.dance-tech.net/profile/TroikaRanch ) gives kind of a private workshop for two people on the software Isadora, which he invented.

Everything is quite informal and relaxed - a good start for a young festival.


http://art-on-wires.org/


(*)

We is:

Marko Ritter - VVVV programmer - http://blog.intolight.de

Valérie-Françoise Vogt - graphic design - http://veevee.de

Jacob Korn - musician (Abelton, Max 4life) - http://www.jacobkorn.de/

Johanna Roggan - dancer, choreographer - www.moveonit.net


About me, Johanna Roggan:

I'm a dancer, dance creator, teacher. Currently residing in Dresden, Germany. Working together with the non-profit organization Trans-Media-Academy (TMA) Hellerau ( http://t-m-a.de/ ).

I'm going to give a workshop here in Oslo for interactive environments. Questioning the need of interactivity in performances, how long is it supportive and when does it turn into a show effect.

About communication between the performance-developer (the dancer, the programmer, the designer) - how to find a common working language.

Read more…

Art.On.Wires Festival Oslo 2010 - day 4

May 13th

After an AMAZING evening with 3 professors playing music for us, a handsome live act by Jacob Korn, amongst others, and a very cosy atmosphere, the next day started relatively relaxed and a bit late. For me at least.
Jacob Korn gave his Abelton live/MAX MSP workshop.

Here and there was still some working, talking, tinkering around going on.


Within the festival there was a small scholarship given for two projects.

Veronika Mayerböck, Jordi Puig & Wendy Ann Mansilla presented us their work-in-progress results from the last 4 days of researching. Veronika was hunting for a way to let music response to light changes.

Jordi Puig and Wendy Ann Mansilla were working on light changes in 3D environments.

But in general we had to dismantle everything.
We (the Dresden crew) left around 5pm.

It's not the easiest to make a synopsis on the last 4 days.
We all had a very good time. We met new people, were listening to interesting keynotes and workshops, we had good food and good music all the time. We learned new things or immersed deeper into topics, software or conversations.
We were part of a great birth of new and promising festival for media art on wires.
For the next year we all just hope for more audience. This festival needs to be seen!

People missed out something very special.


A BIG thank you to Alexander Eichhorn and all the hands and good souls behind the scene! Great work, well done!


Thanks for reading,
Johanna
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Art.On.Wires Festival Oslo 2010 - day 3

May 12th
First some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/art-on-wires/

This day we started the interactive environment workshop with introducing the software VVVV (V4). Two rows of laptops (which have to run windows for using V4) were set in front of a screen to show each single step on it. Valerie Vogt and Marko Ritter were conducting the workshop and walking around to help out with any problem the participants might have.
It was an short and very basic introduction of how to use it and what is possible beside making 3D generated graphics.

One of the most beautiful things here at the festival is the feeling of equality with every person. Two luminaries of the media art section were holding a keynote and afterwards they just hang out, talk to who ever is having a question. There is no privileging going on. Just Sharing knowledge, interest and going for ones curiosities.
Lars Graugaard, Anders Friberg both from the Stockholm university, Alexander Refus Jensenius (Olso university) and Aki Asgeirsson from Iceland hold a keynote on „systematic understanding of music“ by presenting several projects.
Music and emotion and creating new instruments were the trigger point of their lecture.
Coming from the fact that there is a level of emotional content inside every musical piece, they disassemble the vocabulary in order to categorize it into parameters like sad, happy, angry, tenderness/love etc.
Knowing that an expert listener is able to distinguish different moods easily but not an untrained ear, every research issue comes across psychology.
Emotion perception – listeners' perception of emotional expression.
Lars Grauggard and Anders Friberg presented then a software based on MAX/MSP which works with these parameters to analyze music and/or create new music pieces.
http://www.graugaard-music.dk/
Alexander Refus Jensenius gave us a brief glimpse on his, still in germinal, SUM sensor device. A gadget like tool to measure emotions. Using the information of blood preasure (via infrared), skin conduction and movement, the small sensor device in your hand gives a lot of parameters to scale your sensitivities.
It is still under construction but could be used in performances to navigate other out/input for instance.
http://art-on-wires.org/workshops/sum
Aki Asgeirsson presented us some of his new instruments he invented. One is an impossible one but still quite impressive. He would use the tunnels of Iceland. Tunnels such as for cars, wires, water. On one side he would place a violin snail on the other end a horn looking like amplifier. For every tunnel the same set up. The audience would be sitting in the center of Icland and receive all tones from all tunnels. BUT – the tunnels have to be empty. So that is the impossible part of it.
http://slatur.is/aki/about.html


After a short break Atau Tanaka was holding his keynot about various projects he has done.
He was working on using networks as a performance space, network music and many different music-related projects and research fields.
I really recommend to read his papers or watch the recorded lecture (online soon on www.art-on-wires.org)
http://www.ataut.net/site/spip.php?page=plan
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab/people/profile/atau.tanaka


Before lunch time Alexander Eichhorn announced the open laboratory space – so who ever is interested in collaborating with one, two, three of the others at this festival, should go for it and maybe we have something to show at the end.
It is meant to be an option of crossing boarders, of overcoming the idea of this or that could never funktion together but just trying it out and having fun within it and maybe have some outcome.

There is some not so well recognized stuff going on as well. Beside two always very tasty meals (lunch and dinner (German chefs)), the crew FEM ( www.fem.tu-ilmenau.de ) is, beside managing all sound and light happenings, recording and live-streaming the whole festival all the time. All lectures, keynotes, workshops are streamed and most of them will be online soon – if you missed something.

The evening concert series is about to start. All the musicians, producers and Vj's in the hall are going to have some great fun together.
At first all is a live act and then the Dj's will finish us up..
Pierre Proske (music), Arturo Castro (visuals), Jacob Korn (music), Marko Ritter (visuals), Lars Graugraad (music), Aki Asgeirsson (music), Atau Tanaka (music) and then the two Dj's Rainer Wachtelborn and Dj Subway.
www.jacobkorn.de
www.residentadvisor.net/dj/rainerwachtelborn
www.myspace.com/_subway
www.digitalstar.net/about/

http://arturocastro.net/index.html



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