The experience of sound is internal, as a process that influences the relationship between the self and the environment. True navigation consists of a continuously coherent relationship between the two.
I read excerpts from books that represent a series of correspondences between my ideas in Sun Run Sun and those of other writers, thinkers composers. They re-enforced five points:
1. static position is derived from movement
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, Movement Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press 2002)
Chapter 8 is called Strange Horizon and deals with navigation and body topologies (p180)
2. Where am I? Correspondence between place and map, the surroundings and its representation.
Edwin Hutchins Cognition in the Wild (MIT Press 1995)
presents research in cognitive science using navigation on a naval vessel as the primary investigation. Also a large section on Micronesian navigation techniques in contrast to Western techniques.
3. sounds in water, air and solids; the ear in orientation and balance
David Dunn Why do Whales and Children Sing? (Earth Ear 1999) I played the excerpt on underwater sounds. (p33)
4. towards amphibians, swimming, floating, frogs
Umberto Eco The Island of the Day Before (Minerva 1995)
the main character is discovering how to swim from the boat to the shore, and attempts to copy the movements and sounds of a frog... (p361)
5. a planetary, orbiting perspective
R. Buckminster Fuller Intuition (Anchor Press 1973)
this amazing book was written on the eve of the launch of his yacht which he named Intuition. I read a section about moving in and out, rather than up (stairs) and down (stairs), with respect to the earth. (p106-112)
"...we are indeed riding
Within the thin gaseous skin of a planet."
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I'm presenting the ideas around the project at Mediamatic in Amsterdam as part of the Eco-Aesthetics exhibition and events organised by <>TAG.
Here's the program for the evening:program
"How can artists translate everyday information visually or sonically? What are innovative artists and designers doing to promote conservation of resources using innovative technology and creative thinking? How can art make us more aware of the kilowatts we consume or the carbon we emit? Can artists significantly inspire observers to be more environmentally sensitive by giving information a particular form or sound? Furthermore, can art increase our ability to analyze and relate spiritually and emotionally to the natural world we live in?"
19:00 entrance
19:15 - 19:20 introduction by Hicham Khalidi
19:25 - 19:45 lecture Tiffany Holmes
19:50 - 20:10 lecture Beatriz da Costa
20:15 - 20:35 concert
20:35 - 20:55 pause
20:55 - 21:15 lecture Michael Mandiberg
21:20 - 21:40 lecture Yolande Harris
21:45 - 22:05 lecture Esther Polak
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There was a fantastic turn out at <>TAG for the performance, so many people that they didn't actually fit - sorry to anyone who couldn't see or be within the 'aquarium' of speakers where the sound was best.
I used 2 of the Satellite Sounders (you can see one lying on the table, I'm bringing the other one in from outside) and managed to keep the live GPS signal during the performance, both sounders were mapped to different sounds.
I'm still waiting for the official photos, I found this on flicker taken by one of the audience - thanks! they note that the dutch minister of culture is sitting in the corner on the right...
thanks to Keir, Hicham and others from <>TAG for making this such a fun event!
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The motherboard carrying the processor is the smallest 'gum'-sized board on top of the slightly larger expansion board which carries the GPS receiver, audio. and connectors. To upload files we had to use the serial connection (USB didn't work with this combination of boards, and there were other problems with bluetooth), Jorgen made a beautiful hidden connector that sits between the two boards. The whole thing is secured tightly by waxed string. The next stage was covering in rubber shrink-wrap - material that shrinks when heated to protect electronics, which gives the final form of the satellite sounders.
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;)
;)
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date: Saturday 15 March
time: 16:30
entry: 5 euros
location: <>TAG Den Haag
part of Dag in de Branding edition 07
Imagine a coastline, a land of rising and falling water levels, an inevitably increasing wetness in some areas and dryness in others. Imagine yourself sometimes hovering and sometimes submerged in a sonic sea that meshes navigational data and marshland amphibians…
Sun Run Sun charts a path between environmental engagement and technological development, using sound as the medium to enhance both. Signals from satellites in orbit, together with the performer’s coordinates on earth, generate live music in real time.
“I use sound because it is not an object, not something to hold or touch, not external to myself,” states Harris. “The experience of sound is internal, as a process that influences the relationship between the self and the environment. True navigation consists of a continuously coherent relationship between the two.”
During her thirty-minute performance, Yolande will slowly reveal the patterns of orbiting satellites coming in and out of range and inconsistencies in how GPS technology locates the self in a longitude/latitude grid. Harris’s soundscape, in both the performance and the installation, questions what is inside and what is outside, what it means to be located and what it means to be lost.
Sun Run Sun delicately treads a path between technical data and actual experience, between the artificial and natural. It joins the disparate sonic worlds of electronic satellite signals and the songs of marshland amphibians. This hybrid form of knowing, techno-intuition, unites scientific and innate systems of environmental awareness.
Amphibian is a futuristic vision / audition into a world on the transitional spaces between water and land, the deltas and coastlines that continuously shift, and that are threatening to shift dramatically in coming years. Our blind faith in the technologies of navigation systems morphs into a techno-intuition of an amphibious engagement with our environment. The sounds of orbiting satellites in Sun Run Sun reveal not only our location on a grid, but our relationship to the sky, asking us to re-assess and re-negotiate our connection with the environment.
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15/3 Amphibian
performance during Dag in de Branding Festival at <TAG> Gallery in Den Haag
20/3 lecture Eco-Aesthetics at Mediamatic Amsterdam
22/3 - 28/4 Navigating by Circles
video and sound installation in the Eco-Visualisation exhibition curated by Tiffany Holmes and Hicham Khalidi at <TAG> Gallery in Den Haag
28/3 - 10/5 Satelllite Sounders and Dead Reckoning
sonic walk and sound installation in the Territorial Phantom exhibition at Netherlands Institute for Media Arts (montevideo) in Amsterdam.
2/4 Sun Run Sun
performance at STEIM in Amsterdam
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Sukandar has thoroughly documented the technical details of making the satellite sounders, mostly relating to the Gumstix development: http://sungum.pbwiki.com
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the second prototype showing the wrapped gumstix and GPS antenna, without battery and headphones, gives an idea of the modular form of the final sounder
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listen to these on headphones at a low volume!!!
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this week and next week working on the hardware at STEIM, with Jorgen - batteries, antenna, casing, placement of final modules - and Sukandar whose working with the 5 new sets of Gumstix getting Linux running and installing PDa to run the sound patches I've been working on. testing outside soon i hope...
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by "mapping" i refer to decisions of how to transform data into sound
this is a relatively simple example:
GPS data is limited in its ranges and frequency of change
the sound is limited by the computing power of the small device
i need identify the prominent characteristics of movement and change in the data and map this to suitable changes in audio. but to do this I need to have an idea of the density of the soundfield I will make, how perceivable changes in data will be, how the characteristics of movement will be traceable in the final sound.
the data has specific numerical ranges and limits. the sound is only limited by human hearing range and distortion of the audio signal. so choices have to be made at the specific level of numerical transformations into audio processes and the final audible result will be particular to those choices.
the sonification of data implies an obligation to choose sounds, and engage in the sonic as composition and as a field of emotive potential to the listener, basically pure sound overlayed or underlayed with patterns of meaning that may or may not be apparent in the audible experience.
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GSV satellite data describes the changing envelope and stereo placement of the electronic sounds, combined with the frogs (from David Dunn's "Why do Whales and Children Sing")
Here the GSV data is different because other satellites are being tracked. I'm experimenting with different ways of sonifying the RMC (long/lat) data and altitude, here the noise in the background is filtered according to the changes.
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David Dunn's excellent recent article "Acoustic Ecology and the Experimental Music Tradition"
http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5399
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Amphibian is a futuristic vision / audition into a world on the transitional spaces between water and land, the deltas and coastlines that will shift in constitution over the coming years. Our blind guidance of technologies of navigation systems starts to morph into a techno-intuition of amphibious involvement with environment. Listening to the orbiting satellites we can hear more than our location on a grid, asking us to re-assess and re-negotiate our relation with the environment.
imagine:
satellites,
between land based and in air
to on and under water
now think of coastlines and deltas
and the shifting water line
the altitude trace above and below water-level
the wetness of the sound and the dryness of the sound
now imagine the sound of amphibians
the frogs
towards an amphibious state
of techno-intuition
coastlines are the area of change
if sea-level rises
we are moving underwater
this is dormant in the consciousness
(as is noah's ark)
so the sound will become wetter
(and we will become amphibian)
we run on this line of rising water
blue underwater in air
whale amphibian
sound water
liquid air waves
locating my beach in the sky
cloud surfing
under liquid form unity of substance
float between states
states at edge make a
breaking wave
thunder from location data
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these prototype sounds will be developed for the final version; but even now it's easy to hear the movements of the two kinds of data, the satellites themselves (cricketing) and the long/lat position (frogging)
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Last week I collected the prototype of the GPS/sound instrument from Sukandar's studio in Berlin. These photos show the bare boards receiving the GPS data and converting it to sounds using PDa. It's tiny! The plan now is to build these elements into an integrated instrument.
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read damian's report
"I was brought on board this project to help out with Pure Data patch development. Specifically, I was to:
- write a parser for NMEA data in Pd;
- help Yolande translate existing Max/MSP patches to Pd;
- figure out how to connect the NMEA parser to the sound patches (networking protocol);
- ensure sound works on the PDa version of Pd."
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Working on the GPS data (NMEA), receiving, sorting, mapping to sounds and movements in space. With Damian at NIMK. Main issues: GPS parser, to read in the stream of data and make it useful for sound production.
I'm interested in the info of the satellites themselves, the PRN number, elevation, azimuth and signal/noise ratio (often called signal strength). This comes in the GPGSV sentence of the data, there seem to be up to 32 satellites possible but only a maximum of 12 will be seen at any one time. We were getting between 5 and 10 in the artlab on the top floor in NIMK. It's clear to see the changes over time as the satellites move. I imagine each satellite with their own unique sound which is transformed over time by the three parameters (elevation, azimuth, SNR). Damian made a patch that reads all the data but selects the four satellites with best signal, so that when one moves out of range and dissappears it's replaced by another.
The second layer is the location data, or minimum navigation data called GPRMC, which gives longitude, latitude, time, date, speed, track degrees true etc. This is the typical layer used for navigation and is calculated from the satellite positions. It refers to where the player is, not where the satellites are. I want to use this as a different layer of sound in the piece. We talked about ideas of scaling this data for different speeds over the ground, walking, cycling, driving, flying etc - how to keep a sonic identity of a specific place if the data is scaled according to speed. It might be that Brussels ends up sounding like Amsterdam if going fast, but not if walking, which is a nonsense... Is the scaling necessary then? I have to try with the sound, I think it's probably a sonic issue.
Spatialising this sound according the position of the satellites, or the movement of the player. Does this map directly to the real world direction, in which case we need to use a compass, or does this relate to the body of the person? This is different in the portable version and the static installation version.
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Having thoroughly researched the various technical options for developing this piece, we've decided to concentrate on building specifically designed instruments using Gumstix hardware running a Linux operating system and Pure Data /PDa software environment. This addresses the specific requirements of consistent GPS data translated into good quality live stereo sound. It also allows more flexibility in the design of the final instrument, which maybe incorporated into the headphones (still to be decided).
http://www.gumstix.com
http://gige.xdv.org/pda/index.php
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It's really exciting to have got together the following team of experts together to develop this project!
Sukandar Kartadinata www.glui.de - main technical developer, electronics at board level
Damian Stewart www.frey.co.nz - programming PD and PDa
STEIM/Jorgen www.steim.org - mechanical development
V2/Stock and Simon www.v2.org - advisory/discussion role email, on Gumstix development hardware and software
NIMK/Yolande www.yolandeharris.net- artist, research and coordination of project ideas and technical production
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14 Jan - technical research meeting, Stock and Simon @ V2 Rotterdam
21-31 Jan - prototype development, Sukandar @ Berlin, Damian and Yolande @ NIMK Amsterdam.
04-15 Feb - prototype testing, audio development, Yolande @ NIMK,
18-29 Febr- final instrument development, Sukandar Yolande Jorgen Damian @ STEIM and NIMK
3 March - six finished instruments
04-27 March - final refinements
28 March - opening exhibition @ NIMK, Amsterdam
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To breath, to walk, to swim, to rhythm.
The small boat stops becalmed in the middle of the sea, I climb overboard and swim away, then return towards the bow and together we move forwards at the same speed through the water.
The horizon stays at the same distance however far we move towards it. We are sailing forwards but remain in the absolute centre of a disk.
Learning to swim front crawl taught me how to breathe, how to stop salt water flooding down my nose making me choke at every breath.
I breath every two strokes, sometimes every three, whilst my view shifts from the underwater world, cuts through the crumpled surface light and sees the water level and the sky in a second before returning underwater.
Conscious of the responsibility that I am my own engine, as I breathe out through my nose the bubbles rise past my ears with a loud pressure.
The sun is extremely bright around noon so I have to use all three shades on the sextant telescope as I pull down the sun to rest its lower limb on the horizon.
Sleeping on deck ... the sun sets, the moon rises, the moon sets, the planets follow it across the sky, the sun rises ... the sun sets, the moons rises, the planets follow it, the sun rises, the moon sets .... the sun sets, the planets follow it, the moon rises, the sun rises, the moon sets ...
As I walk I remember, and the more I walk the more I remember incidents that I never thought memorable.
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how can an electronic trace contain my feelings, my memories? how can I recognize people and places in an abstract sound of clicks and tones? how personal is this, how exclusive, how intimate, how possible to share?
these sounds are made from a collection of traces of my journeys (physical, spiritual, emotional and creative) over 2007... but what do you hear and feel?
it's a paradox of invisible memories, searching out an electronic intimacy.
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balance and continual shifting of sails and weight in response and anticipation of wind and sea shifts. the precision is intense - the more finely tuned the sailor and the boat, the better performance through the water. i like it as an example of a physical and mental engagement with an instrument (in this case the boat) and the environment, where reactions and anticipations are used at such speed that it is essentially intuitive.
(thanks to my brothers Patrick and Vincent for taking me out to get this shot and talking me through the racing and tuning details - they are Campeones del Mundo! Silver fleet Flying Fifteens, Mallorca 2007)
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Thoughts on the shortest day... it's snowing in Amsterdam
I feel like the days have been accelerating and contracting at the same time during the first month of this residency at NIMK. The day of the winter solstice is a good moment for a turn around towards expansion and production.
Until now I've been in a period of investigation, searching through different technical approaches towards building my small GPS-sounding instruments. Most of this was done through experiments, face to face conversations, chance meetings, emailing and internet research. It surprised me that it's so time consuming, but if I didn't do this research I'd be unable to make decisions about the level of technology needed to realize the idea I'm after. This is the 'material' I'm working with after all. It's a balance between research, finding the critical amount of knowledge needed, and keeping open to changes on the ideas level - which results in a state of perpetual tension...
This artistic process has been like the sonic process of filtering and compression, now i want to start building from these fragments into something new.
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sounds for the first version of Taking Soundings made at the in 2006/7 KHM in Cologne
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Converting my patches between the two programming environments Max/MSP and PD has been easier than I thought. Contrary to what I'd been told, many of the objects are identical if not very similar, and the reference/help patches are often based on the Max documentation. At this stage (which is still early!) I'm working in parallel on both Max and PD testing simple sounds and controls. I have found two GPS NMEA data parser's both available online. The Max version written by Jose Manuel Berenguer can be downloaded here. A PD parser by Alexandre Castonguay is on the puredata.org site here.
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