User:Yoana Buzova/ thesisdraft

Intro

collecting / encoding/decoding / voice

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.

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Descriptions of previous projects

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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