example of synthesis research: Naccarato and MacCallum, "From Representation to Relationality: Bodies, Biosensors, and Mediated Environments" JDSP 8.1 (2015)

Here’s a journal article published by a couple of researchers hosted at Synthesis last year that may be interesting to folks working on movement and responsive media, somatic experience, experimental dance and experimental technology, critical studies of technoscience, or philosophy of movement:

Teoma Naccarato, John MacCallum, “From Representation to Relationality: Bodies, Biosensors, and Mediated Environments,”  in Embodiment, Interactivity and Digital Performance, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 8.1, 2015.

Teoma is starting a PhD with the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University UK
and John is a postdoc at the Centre for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) Department of Music, University of California at Berkeley. 

John and Teoma’s extended journal article is a good example of a durable outcome from the research cluster hosted by Synthesis in the Heartbeat Residency: Choreography and Composition of Internal Time.  This was a residency on temporality — sense of dynamic, change, rhythm — held February 15- 20, 2015. AME iStage, Matthews Center, ASU.




Ambient color changes according to whether dancer’s heart is faster or slower than some rate in the rhythm accompaniment software.  Synthesis Residency Jan 2015.   (The overhead tube lamps from Ziegler’s “forest2" were not used in this particular experiment.)


Improvisation with dancer Naccarato, composer / system creator MacCallum, Synthesis team and members of ASU laptop orchestra (Lorkas). Synthesis Residency Jan 2015.


________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei • 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
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

example of synthesis research: Naccarato and MacCallum, "From Representation to Relationality: Bodies, Biosensors, and Mediated Environments" JDSP 8.1 (2015)

Here’s a journal article published by a couple of researchers hosted at Synthesis last year that may be interesting to folks working on movement and responsive media, somatic experience, experimental dance and experimental technology, critical studies of technoscience, or philosophy of movement:

Teoma Naccarato, John MacCallum, “From Representation to Relationality: Bodies, Biosensors, and Mediated Environments,”  in Embodiment, Interactivity and Digital Performance, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 8.1, 2015.

Teoma is starting a PhD with the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University UK
and John is a postdoc at the Centre for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) Department of Music, University of California at Berkeley. 

John and Teoma’s extended journal article is a good example of a durable outcome from the research cluster hosted by Synthesis in the Heartbeat Residency: Choreography and Composition of Internal Time.  This was a residency on temporality — sense of dynamic, change, rhythm — held February 15- 20, 2015. AME iStage, Matthews Center, ASU.




Ambient color changes according to whether dancer’s heart is faster or slower than some rate in the rhythm accompaniment software.  Synthesis Residency Jan 2015.   (The overhead tube lamps from Ziegler’s “forest2" were not used in this particular experiment.)


Improvisation with dancer Naccarato, composer / system creator MacCallum, Synthesis team and members of ASU laptop orchestra (Lorkas). Synthesis Residency Jan 2015.


________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei • 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
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Einsiedeln poles, "sketching" and collective planning buildings in situ

In the Swiss town of Einsiedeln, city planners put up poles marking the actual volume that would be occupied by a proposed building.   This way all the townspeople form their judgments of how this building would fit into the neighbourhood in situ.





See also, Christopher Alexander’s description of his method starting from the lived experience of the site, and refining concept in moving between multiple representations —sketching, modeling in clay / paper / balsa,  finite element computer modeling, drawing, punctuated throughout by mock-ups on site, in situ with successively more and more convergent materials.

A Small Example of a Living Process (the design and construction of the Upham house in Berkeley):

and the much larger project: the design and construction of the Eishin campus in Japan,
and a hospital in Oregon.

softwear and wearable architecture

txOom, FoAM
2002
Great Yarmouth, East Anglia UK



using pre-cursor to the Ozone media choreography system now in Synthesis

with wireless sensors embedded in walls, fabric, aerial costumes, giant squeezable balls
driving responsive sound and video ( Max/MSP/NATO )

Rolling and squeezing the giant medicine ball with embedded accelerometers
(worked better than bend and pressure sensors at the time)
drove a fomant-based speech synthesis external (CHANT)
to make a screaming moaning creature …

Synthesis and small-mammal art

Many artists and DIY makers try to do their own engineering in an ad hoc way where the poetry becomes caged rather than trellised by the technology.   That's partially due to lack of engineering — not merely technical knowledge but judgment.  A competent engineer solves particular problems efficiently using the entire spectrum of contemporary techniques, a wise engineer thinks reuse while solving problems.   We need wise engineering.  AME has several faculty and staff who embody such combination of technical know-how and judgment.   The maker / DIY attitude is also a consequence of a "truth-in-materials," making-based studio art practice, that in turn was a political reaction against the extreme conceptualism in Euro-American art institutionalized in the first half of the 20c.  This maker-turn is healthy ab ovo, but too quickly becomes dogmatic and self-disempowering when mixed with naive anti-intellectualism.

So much new media, intermedia, makerbot, and DIY tech art feels like the creative flame is encased in some mechanical exoskeleton.  On the other hand, the answer is not simply throw away with structured knowledge and produce shapeless blobs of stuff — “jellyfish" art.  I hope we see more work with bones and ligaments and movement continually made afresh adeptly and deeply informed by technicity (borrowing Simondon).   Art by small mammals in the age of dinosaurs.