Dynamic Media Network » Dynamic Media

Cymatics – Cross-Signal Processing and Synaethesia?

Xavier — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:42:45 +0000

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Cymatics, the study of ‘wave phenomena’, or sound vibrations and their harmonically resonant properties in matter is an area of scientific research which has enjoyed a few brief and spasmodic periods of interest, but often with quasi-scientific and quasi-mystical and spiritual leanings. Whether or not one wants to pursue the relationship of wave phenomena to crop circles, cosmic music, theology and spirituality healing powers, etc etc, the fact remains that cymatics presents a very concrete example of the inextricably material and embodied relationship between the sonic and the visual, between audio and video and the ability of sound to affect and even form physical structures. For this reason it is a very interesting phenomena / research area from the point of view of cross-signal processing, synaethesia and data-visualisation techniques in art and new media. Indeed Robin Fox’s Oscilloscope works and Carsten Nicolai’s audiovisual works with milk employ this very technique of emergent harmonic patterns formed in matter by excitation by sonic vibration.

Cymatics, the study of wave phenomena, is a science pioneered by Swiss medical doctor and natural scientist, Hans Jenny (1904-1972). For 14 years he conducted experiments animating inert powders, pastes, and liquids into life-like, flowing forms, which mirrored patterns found throughout nature, art and architecture. What’s more, all of these patterns were created using simple sine wave vibrations (pure tones) within the audible range. So what you see is a physical representation of vibration, or how sound manifests into form through the medium of various materials. (cymaticsource.com)

Also interesting from a research point of view is this article published in 1982 which sets out to explore the dynamic relationships between sound waves, matter, visual patterns of cymatics in terms of their potential for audiovisual ‘interactive and new media’ environments:

“One of my guiding principles is to create a total sonic and visual music based on archetypal dynamic structures that transcend the cultural deformations of perception. Archetypal dynamic structures result from timeless natural processes that involve the patterns, relationship, interaction and transformations of energy. One such example is the solar system as we refer to it in the planetary, international, social and atomic contexts. Magnetic polarity is another example of a natural energy field. Another is the structure of weather patterns, a model which I have used for the composition of a number of my own interactive environments.

I am sensing on the horizon a truly new field of composition, a field being fostered by the emerging instruments of the electronic arts of sound and light – computers, synthesizers, laser graphics systems, holography and videographics systems. This new field of composition is based on creating totally integrated, nontrivial sound/light compositions from a complex multidimensionally organised wave set – a wave set that will simultaneously speak to the ear and signal to the eye with the life force.”

Cymatic Music: Towards a Metatheory of Harmonic Phenomena: My Interactive Compositions and Environments
# Ronald A. Pellegrino
# Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 120-123

Looking into the author’s history of work, one might have expected his work to have moved further into more current ‘new media’ practices, but there seems to be a recurring theme of limited scope with the study of Cymatics. It appears to be mostly unable to escape the novel other than by way of reference to the mystical – perhaps the relationship between the frequencies and the patterns thus formed are too directly correlative, perhaps surprisingly not dynamic enough in their ability to connect with, and generate new, fields of potential? Perhaps they are too easily captured by a popular cultural pockets of desire for a contemporary quasi-scientific mysticism? I wonder why though, surely there is more to be done here with the relationship between energy waves, sonic and visual patterns and the physicality of matter and bodies themselves?

Net Vis Links: Visualizing the ‘Power Struggle’ in Wikipedia

matwallsmith — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:37:44 +0000

This is in interesting visualization of wikipedia. At the moment this is static but the author plans to develop a dynamic version of this that might be used to watch the activity of wikipedia in real time. Larger nodes indicate centres of high revision.
Smaller yellow nodes represent link sites and images are gleaned for the first of image on each page. As an aside its interesting what the simple addition of the images does in terms of visualization : this starts to feel like a photograph of the network rather than simple its representation…

Net Vis Links: Visualization of Social Roles

matwallsmith — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:26:59 +0000

The Journal of Social Structure has published this paper regarding the visualization of social roles in online discussion groups by Howard Wesler. It may be of interest for its ethnographic approach to the data collection and visualization of USENET threads. The conclusions drawn seem to indicate that such research has value for its ability to potentially automatically identify social roles that emerge in relation to network infrastructure and in so doing structure the network in a way that more appropriately/effectively cultivates specific roles or styles of interaction. I’d see this as an interesting inversion of the usually stated aim to map the network in order to engineer better networks of the future – here there is a concern for the way the network infrastructure and interface produces the user producing the network. There are interesting parallels between this work and the IBM Communications Lab’s work on wikipedia. Both of these projects are also related to Chris Harrison’s work which I’ll account for in another post.

Interesting Net Visuality 1/4

matwallsmith — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:09:45 +0000

The next few posts concern net visuality. Most of the focus on visualization and data collection but I think they are nonetheless of interest for the way a concern for visualization reiterates dominant modes of net visuality or suggests new ones.

Most of the projects below are interesting for both the types of data collection and the forms of visualization that they show as prevailing in cartographic circles and the rhetoric that justifies this kind of research or activity. In short the dominant aims stated in the blurbs of these projects is to come to terms with the structure of internet and its use so that we can better develop network frameworks and applications for the future – the ones that aren’t concerned with technical systems are purely ethnographic. Very few high level (data intensive) visualizations have navigation/discovery/end user in mind. While there is an obvious understanding of the way our potential to visualize the network affects our potential to develop for that network there is little concern for the way prevailing network visualities have operated as ‘governmental’ technologies that structure the development of policy, technology, infrastructure and use – and, one might hasten to add, never to specifications of a governmental strategy. In the cases that are reflexive at this level there appears a disconnect between that act of measuring and modelling and what we might do with that data in terms of infrastructure or utility; measuring and modeling it seems is often an end in itself

Some DM Links.

matwallsmith — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:20:53 +0000

Artificial Eyes- The now infamous Instanbul based VJ collective.

Semiconductor - A London based installation VJ collective

Mutek- A recent digital creativity and electronic music festival in Montreal – lots of streaming media here, many VJ links, abstracts from round tables.

Dynamic Media and HCI institutions-1

matwallsmith — Sat, 26 May 2007 03:47:17 +0000

I have begun looking to institutions in Northern Europe the UK and Canada with an interest in Dynamic Media and Embodied HCI. There seems to be a high degree of networked collaboration between institutions and projects and so there will be some crossover.

I began with ReFlex the Flexible Reality Centre which is a research centre focussing on the application and accesibility of 3d modelling and ‘virtual reality’ technology to the general community for primarily both business and professional (design) ends. The focus appears to be making VR accessible/profitable for working professionals and medium to small business use. The site is largely concerned with presentation of a masters program specializing in delivering VR/Modelling skills and applying them to fairly straightforward VR models concerned with agile prototyping, presentation, walk-throughs and etc. The Flexible Reality centre is attached to the University of Lund Sweden. There is little research presented on this site apart form masters theses concerned with modeling.

The ReFlex centre is a part of the Enactive Network of/for Excellence which is concerned with Enactive HCI design. From the Enactive website;

The driving concept of Enactive Interfaces is then the fundamental role of motor action for storing and acquiring knowledge (action driven interfaces). Enactive Interfaces are then capable of conveying and understanding gestures of the user, in order to provide an adequate response in perceptual terms. Enactive Interfaces can be considered a new step in the development of the human-computer interaction because they are characterised by a closed loop between the natural gestures of the user (efferent component of the system) and the perceptual modalities activated (afferent component). Enactive Interfaces can be conceived to exploit this direct loop and the capability of recognising complex gestures. Intelligent interfaces recognise the gesture of the user at the beginning of the action and are able to interpret the gestures (in terms of intentions, skills and competence) and to adapt to them in order to improve the users performance.

Enactive is actually a loose network of sattelite projects and institutions that undergo diverse projects generally conceived under that banner and committed to the exchange of information through that network and an accompanying conference. The conference is in Grenoble in November of this year. There is quite a lot of published work on this site and I have only just started to sort through it. Much of these publications point directly to interesting projects at partner institutes.

One interesting Partner institute was the CERTEC division at Department of Design Sciences at Lund Univerity’s Faculty of Engineering, Lund, Sweden. CERTEC is concerned with Rehabilitation Engineering and Design and Situated Research and Design for Everday Life . The division’s publications are available here.

Another Enaction partner is Miralab and although well outside your region of interest (Geneva) is nonetheless of interest for the magnitude and diversity of dynamic media and HCI projects with which it is engaged. There is also a great number of recent papers on mixed and virtual realities, tele-presence, and graphics generally (this is a dhtml site without perma-links so look under ‘projects’.) – While I’m stuck in Switzerland check out this VRLab also attached to the Enaction Network for some interesting HCI/Haptics papers.

While I’m here I’ll post this link to HMC Interactive an interesting UK (Plymouth) Commercial Design company that does interesting work with responsive projections and has worked on a number of projects with a social bent. Particular interesting is the work done for the Montana Assistive Technology Centre.

Getting back on track the VRlab at Aalborg University began as an interdisciplinary centre with representatives from both the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Engineering and Science working together. Focus would be on Virtual Reality as a technology and as a medium. There are a number of interesting VR applications and facilties that use a combination of ‘cave’ and theatre like reality projections both of which also employ either passive (polarized lenses) or active (shutter glasses) stereo vision systems. The most intriguing project here are the Data mining and theatrical applications of the technology but the centre also works on community and industry visualizations. There are no published papers at this site but some promotional documentation of projects and facilities. The data mining and 3D Visualization of data fields is documented here. It is interesting in so far as it realizes the potential of VR once we move away from straight representation allowing a dynamic interaction with data via a spatio-temporal rendering – a shift from VR presenting an ideal reality to augmenting the real by producing the potential for new relational interactions with implications that shape the development of actual bodies.

what is the dynamic media project?

annamunster — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:16:22 +0000

Andrew Murphie and Anna Munster will be mainly posting in this research group. We might be joined by Adrian Mackenzie and Brian Massumi who are partners in our ‘Dynamic Media’ Project – an Australian Research Council funded project that goes until 2010. So, that’s who we are…but what do we do?
We’re hoping to articulate and produce ideas about media that take into account their multi-authored, distributed and dynamically changing qualities. Some of this has to do with technological capacities – cross-signal processing, relational databases, object-oriented programming – but perhaps more has to do with our emerging ’socio-technical ensemble’ ( as Guattari would say).
Dynamic media, then, has more to do with the multitude of social software, networking, participatory and multi-user generated forms of media now taking hold.
We want to ask – how does this emerging socio-technical ensemble allow for the production of new problems, new practices and new socialities? We also want to try to make dynamic media that creates new problems to be solved, contributes to new collective practices, enunciations and socialities. Watch this space! It may end up looking something like this image…