User:Yoana Buzova/RW3/text1

Descriptions

Monologue Machine is a prototype machine that consists of two elements.It works with an arduino microcontroller, that uses simple open source hardware and simplified programming language to make process of using electronics more accessible. The machine consists of a set of light dependent resistors that receive light and transform its values into a pre programmed musical scale. They are mounted closely to the screen of a tv, modified into an oscillator. The Tv transforms the audio signal into bright white scribbles on the black screen. The sensors measure the light and the values transform into sound. That is how the data loop is created and the machine processes and generates its own data again and again. However, the data never remains the same. The signal is in constant flux, due to the noise that appears trough environment and viewers. The machine talks to itself in a dynamic, nonsense, annoying melody. It is a prototype. If and when an upgraded version is developed it would be displayed as an installation in an art space.

Window Compositions is a custom made music box set. It is a simple automatic, hand-cranked, programmable musical machine that creates sound by the use of a set of pins that pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. The programming object is a punch card, having holes to express a program. The mechanism is mounted in a wooden box (cube with 13 cm sides) with a metal crank and two holes for the punch card to go trough. It is built to be a simple, low-tech, intuitive, instantly accessible object. The process of creating the card melodies is closely connected to photographs. I observe the streets at night and take big scale panoramas of the whole lenght of the streets. After i examine the photos, I take lit windows of the street buildings and apply themas holes in the punch card. The card, decoded by the music box transforms the chaotic noise of the city into a minimal, analog melody. My current intention is to bring the sound back to its original birth place to complete into a feedback loop. This part of the project is still in development. The compositions will live back on the streets in small, concrete speakers, placed in the city, looping the melodies until they get broken or stolen, which hopefully will take long time before happening. The speakers will be built so to be weather and vandalism proof. the only information on them will be the time and place the windows were photographed, thus the moment the melody depicts.

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Abstract

I develop research methods and experiments with various media. Currently I focus on building tangible works and experimenting with DIY strategies both physically and virtually. My interest is in using low-tech, simple, accessible methods in unexpected combinations. I examine processes of encoding, signification and communication to bring personal moments.

recent work

Window Compositions

This project is about encoding and decoding, in other words, defining the transformation of symbols from one set of symbols to another one. It is about hearing music in the city lights. I take the evening streets as an input. The time when daylight fades, windows start lighting up. I record (photograph) the buildings along a taken street and use the lit windows on the different floors to create code for a music box punch card. The punch card is decoded by the box into a tune. The outcome is a rhythmic soundscape of the street. The sound is a reflection of a self-organized pattern of urban structures. It’s variation and complexity depends on scale and liveliness of the moment and the environment. My intention is to bring the sound back on the streets, as an installation, so the dynamics and liveliness of a transient moment could live by being brought back to its place of origin or move to another place (street, city, country) in a different form. I choose the music box because I am fascinated by the idea of scaling down a piece of the city into a small, tangible object. Reducing and transforming the chaotic, dynamic, bustling urban noise into a minimal, analog melody. A mechanical, hand-cranked machine turns people’s unconscious collaboration into a personal, poetic moment.

Identify key themes

encoding - decoding, reinterpreting, self-organised information/events, collecting/using existing content in different context, using combinatorial, generative techniques, neglected material, connection to sonification, low-tech, accessible, diy

why and how

I have a fascination for looking at short-lived, transient situations and objects, I see them and want to collect them, transform them and bring them back in another form. In my work I focus on simplicity and invisible information layers in our environment. I like finding minimal situations in uncommon, contrast places. In most of my works I look for tangibility and materiality, low-tech, diy and found object/moment strategies. I find and collect self-organized structures that i could translate, disassemble, modify so that the emerging form is my work. This is the role of an observer that choses, collects, transforms and makes something new. My methodology is to immerse myself into situations and find in them other ones. I immerse myself trough looking and listening, with or without passing judgement on the collected impressions. I like to take a break and be slow, catch my breath and look around. In unconscious structures i find unpredictability, unrepeatability, algorithm, randomness, endless combinations and recombinations.

I discover these methods in the projects that started in the first trimester. In message delivery, work from first trimester with Mathaijs I focus on self-driven , chain reaction urban encounters. A very primitive, manual adventure of hand-written notes that travel trough the city from person to person and we (the project initiators) serve only as couriers to facilitate, observe and document the randomness of manual interactions. In my video feedback experiments I also take the position of a viewer rather than a director of the work. I record a generative, self-generated visual result.

In my previous work in the context of photography, I gained considerable observer skills/ silent/ looking/ listening/ taking with me.

In my imagework, I have been dealing with subjects somehow similar to my current interests, mostly observation and isolation of neglected objects and situations. In my photography work, I took portrait shoots's trash and used unwanted moments (images desired to be deleted) as a critique to set up, posing and artificiality in photography. In illustrations for a short story by Boris Vian, I isolate existing trivial objects, details and put them in the context of the text to give them a new meaning. I also did image works, fascinated by minimal light compositions and irregular visual perception. Recently I seem to be shifting to using photography as a tool for documentation, going back to basic purposes. Using it as initial input, a sketch to use later and build on. Is no longer a final presentation medium. I now use it to examine and explore it later as source of information.

Identify how texts you have already produced might be useful (descriptions of work, or annotations for instance)

Marx and Engels, The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas Gramsci, History of the Subaltern Classes Notes and Speculations about Cultural Hegemony in contemporary society Melvyn Bragg and guests Raymond Geuss, Esther Leslie and Jonathan Rée discuss the Frankfurt School- Notes

Identify contextualizing texts (art work or literature)

literature+film

Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)

Gregory Bateson, Substance and Difference (lecture)

Whole Earth Catalog, editions published 1968-1972

From Counterculture to Cybercultute, Fred Turner

Charlie Gere, Digital Culture

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Seth Kim-Cohen, In the Blink of an Ear

Tom Johnson, Self-Similar Melodies, 1996

Avant-garde film

"Encoding, Decoding", by Stuart Hall

"A Communications Primer," by Charles & Ray Eames

Matt Pearson, Generative Art

art work

Georgina Starrr, Whistle, 1992

Karlheinz Essl

Dennis Paul, An Instrument for Sonification of Everyday things (2012), Leave a comment toolkit(2010), Snowplay(2009)

Annotate contextualizing texts

write a text on Whole Earth Catalog, in context with the creative industries project and previous and ongoing work