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

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

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

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.