Experiment with electric fish

Here are some of the latest images from the Enki project…

The main view of the experiment chamber. The Enki installation at Cornerhouse is now up and running. There are experiments by appointment every 15mins, and all the data is being collected.

It has taken me ages to make these comms units, they contain16 interconnecting cables within a noise reducing or shielded structure.

The Table has two monitors one from the fish room and one from the human room. You can speak to the person in the experiment via a mic.

Inside the sound proofed room for the human there is a chair and the sensor interface.

There is a window into the fish room on the side of the chamber

The room containing the fish is electrically shielded.

Neuro stimulation

For a while i have been looking at Michael Persinger God helmet experiment, I think the discussion around this experiment was really interesting, and for me has been an opportunity to investigate the realm of psychology further. I got in touch with him to ask some questions about the technology and the experimental process. I decided to make a modified version of the god helmet to work with my Enki interface. here is a view Inside the neuro-stimulation device there are 4 coils which oscillate with magnetic frequencies, i have been using MAX MSP to drive these using electrical pulses. The magnetic coils are fitted to an elastic band which fits over the head, to the back of the head is a junction box, and the two coil arrays sit at the side of the head near the temporal lobes.

Spectropia – toffee apples

This was amazing at the opening of Spectropia- the drinks were covered in foil [apparently to shield them from EM fields [many themes in the conference were to do with the potentially damaging effects of EM emissions] and these was a chef making toffee apples live! they looked so amazing who could resist. The funny thing was that as soon as you bite in to them you teeth get fused together with toffee making it impossible to speak for several minuets!

ART+COMMUNICATION 2008

X International festival for new media culture October 16 – 25, 2008 in Riga, Latvia

spectropica, originally uploaded by Antony Hall. This was one of the best festivals I have participated in so far, alongside the conference was an exhibition in this amazing space, in this image you see a quarter of the space. Though this i was introduced to the notion of ‘wave art’ which has been the theme of a series of, I think, 3 yearly events like this. The highlights were ‘LSP laser / sound performance’ Edwin van der Heideas,  well as, ‘ten Thousand Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid’ , Evelina Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand. No one was allowed to take photos in this event – but it was one of the most incredible things i have ever seen. They used powerful lasers projected through bubble membranes, creating large scale projections. We showed a demo of the enki project.

http://www.rixc.lv/08/en/festival/index.html#
Electromagnetic fields are biologically active. Emitting from every electronic device, electromagnetic fields affect our body and the living nature. They interact with the natural emissions and intersect the boundaries of our planet. Invisible and omnipresent, electromagnetic fields have become ghosts of the modern world…

The 10th edition of the “Art+Communication” festival, organised by RIXC, took place in Riga from October 16 – 25, 2008. Entitled SPECTROPIA.

Vampyroteuthis “vampire squid from hell” – Planet Earth

spectropica “Dreamachine” /2008/

spectropia, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

Greg enjoys the brain machines at Spectrpia conference in Latvia 2008 presentation from 10111.ORG (Gianluca Ruggeri and Filippo Filliger) “Dreamachine” /2008/. The artists recreated some of the original devices and gave a presentation of the history of the dream machine. They also made screen printed templates for creating your own.

http://www.rixc.lv/08/en/exhibition/artists.html

ENTER, 3rd international festival for art science and new technology, Prauge

In 2007 I participated in ENTER 3, http://festival-enter.cz/index.php
organised in by CIANT, I never had a chance to blog it. I had two works here, one of which was a performance showing the BZ reaction, the other was the ENKI documentation at the french institute. The Performance was in a 15th century cellar space, beautiful arched ceilings. The problem was it was so cold the chemical reaction did not start. I had to block all the window spaces with cardboard, to try and keep at least some heat in.

The vampire quid was of inspiration to Louis Beck – I was lucky to see a show of his posters and publications last year at the Goethe institute…Having seen the vampire squid recently on utube it reminded me of the Louis Bec show I saw during the festival…

ON VAMPYROTEUTHIS INFERNALIS
Homage to Vilém Flusser

ENTER 3, 3RD INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL ART / SCIENCE / NEW TECHNOLOGIES enter3.org

blackghost knifefish

blackghost knifefish, originally uploaded by Antony Hall. Image by Elina Chauveaux

The fish in the installation, a great photo by Elina! these fish are quite hard to take a good photo of as they are black , behind glass and always moving around a bit.

auditory and optical illusions

This page from Diana Deutsch has some excellent examples of auditory illusions – This speech to song example is really suprising – you should take the time to listen to the mp3s provided…
http://www.acoustics.org/press/156th/deutsch.html

This page has some great interactive examples of optical and sonic illusions
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/contributions/flinn/Illusions/Illusions.html

and finally this one, its a bit silly but works really well,the ‘virtual Barbour’ shop or ‘hair cut’ you need to use headphones to listen to this one…
http://fn4.putfile.com/getfile/1202092920video1234sslash2523182989.mp3

Lionel-Porter Chemcraft Chemistry Lab, 1958

Lionel-Porter Chemcraft Chemistry Lab, 1958, originally uploaded by Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Last year I made some science kits for teachers, these were activity packs with instructional materials. This year I am looking at making art works based on kits for home tabletop experimentation. This site has some lush images of chemistry sets, in particular –I like this one…