RE: working ethos and models for Synthesis, references for "creativity" | "imagination" | "speculative media(ion)"

Thanks for this, Xin Wei. The LCT is indeed a friend to all of this this! 

My initial thoughts:

Practically: 

1. I think one way to start this conversation would be to sketch out concrete ways in which individuals (from inside and outside ASU) are able to collaborate with Synthesis. The LCT took a crack at this with it's "micro-residency" program. I think SC and LCT should find ways to coordinate some of its micro-residencies. 

2. Pop-up MAs: LCT and Synthesis should direct rotating, theme-based MAs on critical and experimental practice. I don't know how this would work administratively --maybe it's a "stream" within DC? In any case, students would spend 2 yrs working through a "problem" with the goal of developing some experimental concepts. These problems would also fit in with--and significantly transform--ASUs innovation/problem-solution mission, etc. Example problems: "Excess and Scarcity," "Gestural Economies," "Non-anthropocentric Design," "Nonhuman Performativity."

Of course we can and should apply for a grant to do this, but couldn't we prototype some version of this via some good old fashion labor of love? Let's be scrappy :) We'd also demonstrate proof of product for future grants. 

As an SC-LCT joint venture, we'd be carving out an incredibly unique and robust way for critical and experimental collaboration through education and mentorship.

The pop-up MA would also feed SC-LCT micro-residencies: we attract visiting scholars/professors based on the theme. 

There is a precedent for this kind of thing in Amsterdam @ The Sandberg Institute (a part of the world-famous Gerrit Rietveld Academie): http://sandberg.nl/  (see: Temporary Programs)

One draw for students would be attending the Paris Design Workshop that Xin Wei and I will be teaching at this summer and in future years. We could build it into the program. This is what Barbara Formis and I have been chatting about! 

Thoughts?


A.J. Nocek, PhD
Assistant Professor, Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies
Director, Laboratory for Critical Technics (LCT)
School of Arts, Media + Engineering
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Arizona State University
206.434.7637
 

From: sxw asu [sxwasu@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 8:22 AM
To: Christopher Roberts; Brandon Mechtley; Todd Ingalls; Adam Nocek; Julian Stein
Cc: Posthaven Post By Email
Subject: working ethos and models for Synthesis, references for "creativity" | "imagination" | "speculative media(ion)"

Here are some docs describing how I’m trying to build Synthesis, learning from experiences of the TML, and distilled from reflections on the contemporary and recent political economy of lab-based science, studio-based art, empirical work in the technosciences, critical history of the human “sciences” as well as the rich and vital anarchist life of creative play outside the academy.

A core place to start would be notions of process, individuation, life.  There are many ways to think-do-make this, but for me and a lot of the the ecologies of friendships and practices in which Synthesis and TML has flourished, here’s some convenient reference literature:
Daodejing (DC Lau translation), 
Zhuangzi (Burton Watson translation),
Heraclitus (Kahn translation), 
Spinoza, 
Deleuze, 
Deleuze and Guattari, 
Whitehead.

Adam is a friend to this and is firing up LCT and “speculative media(ion)” as good companion projects.   I would like to invite Adam and Todd to be part of Chris Roberts and Brandon’s conversation about how Synthesis can be described in popular terms as a home for “creative practice.”    More precise terms of art include speculative practice and experimental practice (as in the Brill book series), and the problem (in Deleuze, Bachelard senses, see Patrice Maniglier essay)

Where appropriate, I’d like to complement energy, capacities and pool resources for streams or experiments of common interest.







working ethos and models for Synthesis, references for "creativity" | "imagination" | "speculative media(ion)"

Here are some docs describing how I’m trying to build Synthesis, learning from experiences of the TML, and distilled from reflections on the contemporary and recent political economy of lab-based science, studio-based art, empirical work in the technosciences, critical history of the human “sciences” as well as the rich and vital anarchist life of creative play outside the academy.

A core place to start would be notions of process, individuation, life.  There are many ways to think-do-make this, but for me and a lot of the the ecologies of friendships and practices in which Synthesis and TML has flourished, here’s some convenient reference literature:
Daodejing (DC Lau translation), 
Zhuangzi (Burton Watson translation),
Heraclitus (Kahn translation), 
Spinoza, 
Deleuze, 
Deleuze and Guattari, 
Whitehead.

Adam is a friend to this and is firing up LCT and “speculative media(ion)” as good companion projects.   I would like to invite Adam and Todd to be part of Chris Roberts and Brandon’s conversation about how Synthesis can be described in popular terms as a home for “creative practice.”    More precise terms of art include speculative practice and experimental practice (as in the Brill book series), and the problem (in Deleuze, Bachelard senses, see Patrice Maniglier essay)

Where appropriate, I’d like to complement energy, capacities and pool resources for streams or experiments of common interest.








And as a personal supplement:

puppetry & film animation >> interaction

for 20 years since sponge, my fellow artists and i measured our work not to “new media” or anything to do with “computation” or "interaction” but to the most highly evolved and richest arts: theater, architecture, plastic arts, visual arts…

we aspire to make experiences as powerful as that which were achieved by the likes of Bertoldt Brecht, Sankai Juku, Dumb Type, or Anish Kapoor, Mona Hartoum, Renzo Piano, …

by such standards very very few works of computational media art “measure up” in experiential and conceptual power. but that should impel us to do more. certainly that should prevent us from lapsing into the complacency typical of programmers who discover the pleasure of mapping an input into a color or a frequency, and stop there.

ever since i established the Topological Media Lab in at GaTech, i said we do not do “interactive” stuff. and when i accepted the Canada Research Chair in “new media” i said there is no such thing as new media :)

elegant mappings of motion into graphics by Tobias Grumbler

Jitter artists:

Tobias Gremmler’s elegant, straightforward mappings of motion into graphic renderings could be a nice inspiration for 
mocap —> jitter if we can figure how to work with a sparse set of trackers.


The quality suggests it is not realtime, but this is useful for ideas for jitter instruments that should be doable in Max 7 / gen.
The primitives are lines and points, so not very challenging to render on gpu.   We don’t have the density.   

Could be time to implement camera-based tracker-free mocap as jitter externals.





________________________________________________________________________________________
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
_________________________________________________________________________________________________


________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei, PhD • Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASU
Fellow: ASU-Santa Fe Center for Biosocial Complex Systems
Affiliate Professor: Future of Innovation in Society; Computer Science; English
Founding Director, Topological Media Lab
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Laetitia Sonami Ladys Glove & Michel Waisvisz, Hands. gestural instruments, STEIM

Two powerful performers in the STEIM family: Laetitia Sonami and Michel Waisvisz
STEIM: STUDIO FOR ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC MUSIC, Amsterdam

Laetitia Sonami
Lady’s Glove

Éliane Radigue et Laetitia Sonami, The last of the LADY’s GLOVE | Les Soirées Nomades - juin 2015


An Historical Moment on a Line Between A and B de Laetitia Sonami au Mois Multi 10

Uploaded on Mar 10, 2009
À partir dun instrument insolite et original, son Ladys Glove, Sonami tisse en solo une envoûtante performance audio qui prend forme au rythme de sa gestuelle corporelle. Conçu et développé par lartiste, le Ladys Glove est un gant complexe et élégant relié à un système informatique lui permettant de concevoir des sons en temps réel en fonction des trajectoires imposées par son corps. Avec des collages, des échantillonnages de sons et des voix captées dans différents lieux quelle associe à des images vidéo de lartiste Sue Costabile, Sonami crée en direct des paysages sonores et visuels à même une danse énigmatique et ensorcelante.

À propos de Laetitia Sonami
(Oakland, États-Unis)

Né en France, Laetitia Sonami est installée aux États-Unis depuis 1975 où elle poursuit son travail en musique électronique. Elle réunit la technologie de pointe, la musique et la narration pour en extraire des récits intimes, une forme d'art spontané qui lui est propre. Elle est surtout connue pour son instrument original, le Ladys Glove. Ses performances des dernières années lui ont valu une renommée internationale. Depuis 1996, elle a été invitée dans plusieurs festivals internationaux et a fait des prestations dans les grandes capitales culturelles du monde. Son travail a été récompensé par de nombreux prix. En janvier 1997, le New York Times décrit Sonami comme « a human antenna searching the air for sounds, like a dancer focused on her hands, or like a deity summoning earth-shaking rumbles with a brusque gesture. »


and 

Michel Waisvisz, Hands instrument, STEIM

Michel Waisvisz - 1993

Michel Waisvisz - Hyper Instruments Part 1

Bert Bongers was a key engineer creating these instruments 

art, Chaosmosis 131

The artist - and more generally aesthetic perception - detaches and deterritorializes a segment of the real in such a way as to make it play the role of a partial enunciator. Art confers a function of sense and alterity to a subset of the perceived world. The consequence of this quasi-animistic speech effect of a work of art is that the subjectivity of the artist and the “consumer” is reshaped. …. The work of art, for those who use it, is an activity of unframing, of rupturing sense, of baroque proliferation or extreme impoverishment, which leads to a recreation and a reinvention of the subject itself.

Felix Guattari, Chaosmosis 131

Re: frameless, physically generated animation of shadow (puppets)

Hi all,

Thank you for sharing!  Here are links to some of the projects that I have been also referencing.

A. Remnance of Form

B. Augmented Shadow

C. Shadow (2002) by Scott Snibbe

D. Kumi Yamashita

Much appreciated,
Cooper

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Shaun Ylatupa-Mcwhorter <sylatupa@asu.edu> wrote:

My answers to Xin Weis questions,

 

Q1.  Can you think of some interesting / viable ways to do continuous, Mechanical, Analogs

 

A1: Draw examples for the countless biological forms and their interplay

Schema

-- Object and Activity, spatial distance to, Object, temporal distance, Action

Sound

-- Tree Creeking against tree during wind-blow

-- A bush Chiming against chain-link- fence during a walk-by

-- A log sounding against bird beak during dig

-- Grass rustles against feet during walk-by

LIGHT

-- A leaf shades against forest floor during sun shine

-- A water reflects against bridge during street lights

-- A forest glows amidst camp during fire burn

-- A branch bending under weight during a bird-rests

 

Q2.  If you need to resort to electricity, how can you make the electro-mechanical system consume minimum energy?

A2: The least amount of energy can be achieved by only measuring or rendering the minimum spatial or temporal change, by the Object and subject, required so that the desired level of perception, by the observer, is achieved. Don’t collect or measure data with too fine of a grain. Don’t render light or sound to too fine of a resolution. If there is too great of difference between the resolution of the measured data and the desired rendering then either preprocess the data before rendering or do an efficient compression.

 

Brenda,

I love the idea of using peoples motion, fire light.

And I also like the mirrors directing light—especially with the provided video, that would be a challenge to add value to that installation; and it would also be fun to play with.

 

 

From: Adam Nocek [mailto:Adam.Nocek@asu.edu]
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2016 9:55 AM
To: sxw asu <sxwasu@gmail.com>; Varsha Iyengar <varshaiyengar@hotmail.com>; Sudarshan Seshasayee (Student) <prashanth.sesh@asu.edu>; Sanghyun Yoo (Student) <cooperyoo@asu.edu>; Julian Stein <Julian.Stein@asu.edu>; Connor Rawls (Student) <Connor.Rawls@asu.edu>; Joshua Stark (Student) <Joshua.M.Stark@asu.edu>; Matthew Briggs <matthewjbriggsis@gmail.com>; Loren Olson <Loren.Olson@asu.edu>; post@synthesis.posthaven.com
Cc: synthesis-research@googlegroups.com; Shang Wang <swang158@asu.edu>; Jonathan Bratt (Student) <jdbratt@asu.edu>; Minsoo Kang <mkang29@asu.edu>; Jonatan Lemos <jlemoszu@asu.edu>; Brenda McCaffrey (Student) <brendamc@asu.edu>; Dallas Nichols <drnicho1@asu.edu>; Micky Small <msmall4@asu.edu>; Shaun Ylatupa-Mcwhorter <sylatupa@asu.edu>; Yongshi Zhao <yzhao91@asu.edu>; Peter Weisman <peter.weisman@asu.edu>; Assegid Kidane <Assegid.Kidane@asu.edu>
Subject: RE: frameless, physically generated animation of shadow (puppets)

 

Ahhh... the virtual life of sculpture is animation--animation haunts. I love it!

 

A.J. Nocek, PhD
Assistant Professor, Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies
Director, Laboratory for Critical Technics (LCT)

School of Arts, Media + Engineering
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-9309
phone:(206) 434-7637

 

From: sxw asu [sxwasu@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2016 8:30 AM
To: Varsha Iyengar; Sudarshan Seshasayee (Student); Sanghyun Yoo (Student); Julian Stein; Connor Rawls (Student); Joshua Stark (Student); Matthew Briggs; Loren Olson; post@synthesis.posthaven.com
Cc: synthesis-research@googlegroups.com; Adam Nocek; Shang Wang; Jonathan Bratt (Student); Minsoo Kang; Jonatan Lemos; Brenda McCaffrey (Student); Dallas Nichols; Micky Small; Shaun Ylatupa-Mcwhorter; Yongshi Zhao; Peter Weisman; Assegid Kidane
Subject: frameless, physically generated animation of shadow (puppets)

Over the past couple of years, some of us have been talking about animation, shadow puppets, and analog “computation.”

 

 

No frames.

No digital logic.

No computer.

Analog, continuous computation. 

 

There are many ways to make this analog system responsive to contingent human activity ((i.e. “interactive")

 

Q1.  Can you think of some interesting and mechanically viable ways to do that?

 

Q2.  If you need to resort to electricity, how can you make the electro-mechanical system consume minimum energy?

              

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASU

skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962

_________________________________________________________________________________________________