Biosonar project 2009

Biosonar project 2009, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

Biosonar project 2009

Biosonar project 2009, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

Testing the sonar suit

Dodecahedral speaker in progress

IMG_6981, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

Dodecahedral speaker in progress

Slime kit

Slime kit, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

A mini slime kit for exploring polymers, i created this for someones birthday.

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.

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…

Tabletop experiments

Tabletop experiments, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

Experiments @ the big draw UCL 2008

iLog developments

check out the latest prototype iLog!!! Over the past few weeks the owl project have been developing some new iLogs – This is a test run before it is finally sealed up and polished…Tilt sensors help give a more physical interaction – you have to swing it about a bit to do any thing…The other Owls – Simon and steve currently working on ilogs with accelerometers…

Fully programmable USB connective.
3 controllers (One switchable to Light sensor)
4 directional tilt switching.
4 push buttons
2 Toggle switches
http://www.owlproject.com/

AquaJelly

A school of 40 AquaJellys in a large tank. The AquaJelly is an intelligent autonomous robot with bionic features.

Slime mold escapes

Simon Parks a microbiologist at University of Surrey, & represents & a “collective” of artists working with slime molds called the Physarum Dynamic. see http://www.unnecessaryresearch.org/

He sent me these amazing images of slime molds creeping over a book. apparently a laboratory accident of some kind – these molds try to escape the confines of the petri dishes given the chance. I would not like to fall asleep near one.

He as well as other members of the institute of unnecessary research have been keeping these as pets.
Simon also works with these ‘bio-fluids’ bacterium which appear to behave like fluids, rather than typical bacterial cultures which tend to propagate in circular growths. I am still not clear on the mechanism of this phenomena, But here is Simon’s take on it;

“This type of bacterium grows as a long chain of many thousands of individual rod-like cells. The chain is extended by the growth of individual bacteria within the chain and these generate a pushing motion. Single chains of bacteria, join together to form threads and the pulsing power is amplified. I think this is how the waves are generated with whole masses of bacterial threads uniting to become a wave that flows around objects and becomes turbulent”

In this image the growth filaments or strands seem to be encircling this opening in the medium; the circular hole that was cut in the agar gel – this looks as if it were liquid pouring through a hole. It would appear that the bacterium obeys the laws of fluid mechanics.

Tardigrades In Space (TARDIS)

A few years back I was trying to extract Tardigrades (Moss bear or Water piglet!)from old moss specimens at Manchester Museum – as it is reported that these animals can survive in a dehydrated state for over a hundred years. These are microscopic extremophiles that live in moss. I had no luck – but did find a multitude of other interesting microscopic artifacts. last night I found out that a satalite has been launched carrying a team of elite tardinauts into space to see if they are able to survive the solar radiation. “They also are resistant to levels of X-ray radiation that are hundreds of times more lethal to humans and other organisms. This resilience stems from the tardigrade’s ability to survive without water. ” If anything can survive the extreme conditions of open space – it will be Tardigrades- follow the link to this site to find out more…

Tardigrades In Space (TARDIS)

Tardigrades In Space or “TARDIS” is the first research project to evaluate the ability of tardigrades to survive under open space conditions. TARDIS is one of the projects within the Biopan-6 research platform provided by European Space Agency (ESA), and will be sent into space with the russian FOTON-M3 mission.

Cave spider exoskeleton

IMG_4880.jpg, originally uploaded by Antony Hall.

I just spent a week in luxemborge to present the ENKI project at a, exhibition and networking event. “dedicated to the European emerging creation, more than a hundred artists coming from all around Europe, Asia and Canada in the Pépinières programme.”
I took time out to explore the caves of the fortress near the exhibition and found this moldy spider exoskeleton hidden deep inside the rock.

Water shoes – walk on water!

I am proud to present a scanned in plans for the construction of water shoes. The “Hobbies New Annual” presents many projects such as building flying planes, radios and model dioramas etc – however this project stands out. I borrowed this book from my wifes father ages ago – he now accuses me of stealing it! As a child Harriet had always asked if he could make these – for obvious reasons he thought better of it. The book states…

“When complete – these will be suitable for day tripping on local water ways or for longer jaunts around the coast” Excellent – If any one is up for making a pair – perhaps you can join me next year for a water walk?

As you can see from these plans the design is constructed from an old waterproof coat, and other simple materials – surely with a little modification – a safe and working version of this can be made. The obvious concern in what happens when you fall over? I think these should be tried in shallow water first.

Brain waves

In preperation for the next ENKi event, me and Greg spent the day testing the neuro-graphic interface; as an experiment we patched a strong frequency via MIDI to a MAX patch so our brains were modulating all kinds of strange sounds. I dont yet fully understand MIDI – but Later this will combine with the enki interface as a form of feedback.  In this image you can see the  graphics of the brain activity and the  receiver boxes – the sensors are wireless and stuck to our foreheads.

Chemical waves – bz reaction

Finally got around to experimenting with the reaction – trying to work out the best way to get a dramatic visual result – sandwiching the mix between glass and the base of a petri dish worked well – but the waste gas product creates bubbles which eventually obscure the reaction – so we tried to get an even covering over the glass by getting it perfectly flat.

Nicks brother had an idea to try the reaction vertically – which worked amazingly well.

The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D

I was reading about this project in Make magazine – he grows different carnivorous plants from seed, and has filmed the growth process over a year in 3D time-lapse using a LEGO robot to make stereo-graphs using a standard digital camera.

You can buy the DVD from the site (you will need 3D glasses to see the 3D effect).http://www.3dsyndrome.com

Pond life

Here is the original drawing from a project to create a sustainable ecosystem inside a globule of water (1999-2004) – I am just modifying this to include the addition of a laser to detect micro acoustic sounds and sub-sonic architectural noise. the droplet of liquid acts as a natural sensitive body – that can modulate the laser, acting like a lens.

BZ reaction

Last year my self and Nick Senior (Chemist and materials scientist) got together to recreate the BZ reaction – “The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is a spatio-temporal chemical oscillator.” which sounds excellent in its self – but to see this reaction for real is quite un-nerving in a strange way. I have made a page about it which has all the information on this (see pages) This year we are going to try and interface it with sensors to see if we can use the rhythmical pulses to control musical chords. hopefully this will be on show in Prague later in the year…

In this photo from our experiment last year – two spiral formations have developed, they rotate in synchronization and in opposite directions! the image covers about 5cm section of liquid squashed between glass.

BZ reaction page

Shielded Tents

Shielded Tents are based on the Faraday cage principle and are used to cut out electromagnetic interference – (wif, phone signals etc)

I have been considering using one of these to put people in while they interface with the fish. People have been making foil lined clothes to block out RFID scanners – so I am thinking I will need to make my own cage using a foil lining. as these cages are well expensive.
http://www.hollandshielding.com/faraday/shieldedtents.php

Fish Perform Spatial Pattern Recognition and Abstraction

I have been fascinated by this project – Part 2 of the ENKI project will be based around this particular experiment…

Christian Graff, Gwenaël Kaminski, Michael Gresty, and Théophile Ohlmann

“We presented the fishes with different spatial structures, each consisting of a similar tube of insulating material, with eight electrodes set into the inside surface of the tube and wired to a switchboard outside the tank. Depending on the way electrodes were externally interconnected, these assemblies created different “shapes” in space. The shapes were 3D patterns of distortion in the electrical flux issuing from the fish’s electric organ. They formed virtual objects or places that could not be distinguished by visual, mechanical, or chemical means but only existed through electricity, similar to the way in which virtual objects or places on a TV screen only exist through light. In order to perform our tasks, the fish had to actively explore the maze by “scanning” with its electrical field and sensing distortion patterns caused by sinks and sources of flux.”

http://www.sciencedirect.com Current Biology
Volume 14, Issue 9, 4 May 2004, Pages 818-823

acoustic levitation chamber

By Artist/Physicist/Inventor, Dr. David Deak

“The 12 inch cubed plexiglas Helmholtz Resonant Cavity has 3 speakers attached to the cube by aluminium acoustic waveguides.
By applying a continuous resonant(600Hertz) sound wave, and by adjusting the amplitude and phase relationship amongst the 3 speakers; I was able to control levitation and movement in all 3 (x,y,z) axis of the ambient space.
This research was used to show the effects of micro-gravity conditions that exist in the space shuttle environment in orbit, but done here on Earth in a lab.

view on youtube here…

Owl project – Lovebytes

Here is a video taken during the Lovebytes festival – we got rained on quite a lot so there was none much to watch -

We are making a log into a leg – this is a race that pole lathe experts do to prove their skill – they do it in 9mis to make two perfect chair legs – it took us about 3 hours to make one bad one – but its ok because its art.

check out the site www.owlproject.com for full info…

Binary Jam – Liverpool

I did a performance for this event organised by Markus Soukup as part of the Sound Network (Binaural Orchestra (G Byatt, D. Stockton & Guests), Modulus (Antony Hall), Apple & Can (Moebius & Igor Hax), Plus Projection By John O’Shea (‘Photography Where The Shutter Is Not Open’)

The performance was based arround the concept of  amplitude modulation. The earliest experiment using the concept of AM transmission was made at Bell Laboratories – where they used a water jet to record the conversation and ambient sounds in a room and etch these to wax cylinder. C.V. Boys demonstrated the ability of a water jet to amplify the sound of a ticking clock and a tuning fork.

During the performance for binary Jam I placed Daphnia in a droplet placed on a sensor; the water drop created a lens. The sounds were created as the creatures passed through the laser and creating distortions with the movement of the body and antennas – as well as the effect of the creature bouncing on and off the wall of the droplet causing the lens to shake and oscillate – creating a drum like reverberation.

I also used a USB interface with 8 light sensors controlled by candles to generate harmonic frequencies and drones with MAX MSP.

Greg Byatt kindly took these images…

Daphnia – contained in droplet on light sensors.

Droplet with laser transmitting through it.

Sound recording of ICE MELTING

I use hydrophones frozen in an ice block as a demonstration in workshops – The sound varies depending on the rate of freezing & how many air-bubbles are frozen within the block…

ENKI demonstartion

ENKI interface
Test and demonstration of prototype

My self and Gregory Byatt ran this event last year – and are due to do it again this year – only a bit differently – the thing will hopefully sue more visualization and actively use the neuro-feedback (through interfacing it with MAX MSP)

Documentation of first event;
Museum of Science and Industry Manchester, 7th October 2006

A multi media participatory experiment using live Electric Fish, real time neurographic interface visualising brain-wave activity, sound and live video. ENKI is an immersive sensory experience that explores the relationship between art and health, or more specifically, creates a therapeutic exchange between Humans and Electric Fish. It is part the HFID project dedicated to research in cross species (human and fish) communication and commune.

See the film here…
The participants become part of experimental research, as we record brain wave data and monitor the behaviour of the electric fish during the experiment. The electrical activity of the fish is experienced as sound and light via ENKI (a stroboscopic high frequency led placed close to eye lid) and the natural binaural frequencies produce by the interaction and communication between Black Ghost Knife fish. Participants bio-electric field is connected to the aquarium allowing the fish to sense a human (bio)electric image or presence.