This text is meant to be a short memorandum designating some current practices, a couple of plans and ideas, and things to be looked into and done soon. It concentrates on work using natural materials combined with off the shelf media technology. It also looks into the fast changes occurring in the multidisciplinary subareas of both ecology and sonification as part of media arts. It is meant as a sequel to our previous text “Writing at the Threshold of the Hive” <http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/bees_and_literature>. This text was meant to be finished before Christmas 2011, but now New Year is gone already too. Today, the strong winds that were blowing over the region have been picking up speed and are expected to develop into a full-fledged hurricane — named Andrea — tomorrow. Stronger-than-average gusts are expected, with speeds reaching 75–110 km/hr. Tomorrow will be 3 Kings Day.
It started from an interest in insect populations, in particular, bees. After installing beehives at several places close to our living environments, and working with them more intensively over the last year, some ideas about how to approach the data in a creative way started to take shape. To avoid misunderstandings, sonification and visualisation are here seen as artistic practices within a multidisciplinary setting, and related. Actually the whole process is slowly feeding a tentative model, which we want to test out in future creative pieces as a new method. We seek something in which we can easily integrate our working in/with nature as a musician, writer and media artist altogether. What the latter – media artist - is standing for will always remain unclear,at least for the experimental part. Maybe after all, working out a piece of art can also be seen as refining a model for efficiently inducing creativity, and eliciting a(n) (re)action in an environment, either close by (zooming in till we see a molecule) - due to our physical presence - or far apart (but not leaving this world) - thanks to the possibilities of connecting to networks (call it a future 2-way radio + tv + internet & phone offer in one package, cheaply).
The first step is to equip a beehive with sensors, acquiring data from changes in light, heat, pressure, temperature, gasses, air, ozone, … This could be called a first level of perception, because of the roughness of the data. But a more meaningful second level could be described, in which we see correspondences. Furthermore, the data can be related to each other to construct a kind of artificial environment to work with further. Usable data might include the measurements of the weight of the hive, the directions and dynamics of the surrounding air/wind streams, certain specific differences in the heat, and light or air constitution elsewhere around (or in the hive). So much for quantifying/calculating an environment in a simple way, to discern some obvious ecological phenomena over shorter and longer periods of time. [Rem: we skip here the controversial states of the calibration of equipment and the presence of the artists in the environment as well]. A test system was built at Okno.be in 2011 and can be seen online: <http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/data_harvesting>. With an ordinary browser you can even follow the activities in the beehive (when it is not down): <http://hive.okno.be:8090/?action=stream> and <http://hive.okno.be:8091/?action=stream>. In spring 2012 we will try to build an updated version in Hranice u Malče. As an artistic activity we consider this equivalent to building a versatile ecological and artistic instrument. Within the context of open source, a range of modular and easy to connect hardware is available (but not exclusively) around the Arduino acquisition board, and one can use easily some computer languages to control and receive the data, in order to make these new instruments. See <http://arduino.cc>.
At this stage the question of what to do with the resulting information arises. At the moment that the particulars are stored in a memory, patterns start to emerge quantitatively and proportional to time. But writing this is already interpreting and designing the data. Apparently the longer we handle media, the more they shape our perception. But let us be seduced by these a priori machines, and let it be called patterning, generated by humans and different systems together. Also interesting at this point is the common depot of tools that are currently available for approaching this patterning. Apart from a discussion of which computer languages to use - open source solutions are pure data, supercollider, processing, … - a concentration on what algorithms to use seems primordial. Any insight in the spontaneous patterns that occur, and how they transform, tranfigure and evolve due to changing conditions (even how we can predict certain additional patterns to emerge, and envision them already) will depend on the different methods and tools we use for looking at the information. They almost have the status of literary metaphors: simulations of sand piles, water and fluid flows, air stream vectors, photosynthesis loops, swarm algorithms, christallization processes, good old automata, or different types of neural networks etc…
So far science and the arts seem to share a similar approach, an equivalent setup, a corresponding passion. At this point the art lab could still be superficially compared to parts of an ordinary biology research lab. After 50 years of cognitive studies and AI, artists and scientists can use similar approaches for working with data. Taking this further, it would make sense for both disciplines to study the same phenomena together. This collaboration would work only if, of course, each wants to be inspired and motivated by or work with living forms, with nature from the micro to the macro level, and wants to share mutually.
[At the moment here in Praha the sirens are sounding, announcing the 3 minutes of silence for Vaclav Havel's death. Here the writer dreams away, contemplating about how we are sonifying important collective events, and how sound is used for almost designing expressing emotions, either personal and collective. ]
A third level is defined by synthesis or the way new phenomena are generated, and sent back into an environment, either close by or far away, via actuators. This agency is of a special nature and probably delineates the only difference between science and the arts. We automatically think of sound (speakers) or light (projectors), but all devices that change atmospheric pressure, (polarized) light, soil ph, or photosynthesis could come into scope. This connects again the measuring, the patterning, and the synthesis from a bunch of data to a complex time based changing system. Also a cross-site synthesis influencing remote locations over networks is nowadays fairly easy to realize. Just imagine a couple of beehives monitored with the right materials for interaction. Yes, we could communicate with the bees, to create some works together, respecting their own materials, methods and forms for expressivity: wax, honey, propolis, dancing and flying. And they have many more concerted actions than swarming and stinging … (Oh my god, again, the main character is a bee!)
Oh, but maybe, while expressivity and gestures are walking in, meaning is retreating. Also from the ethical level, the question why people would do this to nature can not be answered adequately here. Artists are mostly left socially, culturally and politically isolated in their particular activities. Maybe only aesthetics can give them a satisfactory reward for their efforts. It seem like we are retreating from a traditional definition of sonification and visualisation as a functional tool for knowledge transfer, education or design. That is exactly what we are hinting at. It becomes part of a transdisciplinary artistic practice, reinvented and revamped, overhauled and rehabilitated to become an artistic tool in itself.
Scheme for an Ecological Media Art Model: 1. environment (data analysis A) via bio sensors (light, heat, pressure, temp, gasses, air, ozone, ...) 2. phenomena (data analysis B) like weight, wind dynamics and directions, localisations of (1) 3. memory and patterns/patterning (dynamical representations/activities), algorithms for representing + changing/predicting representations (neural networks, simulations of sandpiles, water and other fluid flows, air streams photosynthesis, swarm algorithms, ...) 4. synthesis (actuators) with atmospheric vibrations, generating new phenomena, and acting on an environment (sound, light, air ...) (global media networks)
Let's say you are traveling through some countries with the radio on, changing stations as you move along, maybe from the Netherlands through Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, through Romania, Ukraine and Poland back to Czech republic. You will undoubtably notice how uniform any radio broadcast can be. Apart from the side effects of traveling long distances with the radio on, the annoyance that makes you constantly change stations, most of the time you have also the feeling you are driving through a graveyard of old pop songs. Even the new ones nowadays don't seem to sound much different from the ones in the 60 and 70s, strangely enough. Yes, strangely enough because for sure it is puzzling how we created media memories at the beginning of the 20th century and by now don't seem to be able to overcome the obsession with the compulsory playing back and copying of our sonic memories. Even worse: we try to stick to the idea that new things are good for us because they reflect some kind of exactly that mentioned weird compulsory play with memory. Basically it is refered to as 'quality' (let's talk about music here and you will see, like Jacques Attali in “Bruits”, 1977 but translated in 1985 by Brian Massumi as “Noise: The Political Economy of Music”, pointed out long ago that it could be indicative of how we will be treating our arts and media in general) because it is a corrupted and ad infinitum repeated copy of the past, but in fact it is the perfect description of “kitsch”. Now, kitsch always played and is playing an important role in popular culture, mainly as a perpetuator of a conservative attitude towards culture, and foremost within an economical-financial safe consumption zone. Sometimes it is hard to make the difference between an original 50-60s song you don't know or a new one from the 2010s that was just released and is pushed in the playlists everywhere. Absolutely: an anachronism.
Somehow with computers, media and contemporary music, avant garde and the experimental, (you know what is meant here) it is just the same. Did anyone notice any change over the last 50 years? Yes, yes for sure, the technology got different but we kept the analog model of operation. The system maintains the convention of an instrument, a virtuoso or gifted group of musicians, a composer, some directors and/or producers, an audience, and an industry. Needless to say Sonic Youth made more money on torturing one John Cage piece than the man himself got for all he did in his entire lifetime. Anywhere you start in music and ecology, you are soon hit with references to the genius Mr. Cage. Twenty years ago, he was already suggesting whatever we are doing today in one or another scribble. But the problem is that there are more remakes of his work than new directions coming from his work and ideas. Cage seems to be a kind of trap as well.
But sure, there have been new developments over the last decades! Nicolas Collins <http://www.nicolascollins.com/> pointed out that hacking and trashy electronics constituted somehow a basis for many interesting pieces, that remain somehow hidden in art history, but his work also reflects the fact that you can create something similar and sometimes better than what your idols and heroes were doing. Nick Collins <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/nc81/index.html> was part of the live coding wave that blasted the world with instant algorithmic music cooked on the spot with rope dancing in the time it took to type and render the code. There are of course many others, but these two demonstrate the development of a different attitude, a different method of approaching and working with composition and media. Have there been developments since? Does computer music now sound any different ? Hard to say, since changes have been so slow and predictable we may no longer be able to hear them at all… An anachronism? Kitsch?
For sure the technology is pushing on relentlessly. Computers are able to handle more at the same time, and at an incredible speed. Read the ads. Add to that the bulk of freely available software, and it all seems to be evolving into a more complete setup for the computer art enthusiast: Max, Pure Data, Supercollider, Chuck,and many more tiny languages and visual (or not at all) language-based tools. These programs of course also offer easily modifiable setups with more complex algorithms than ever before. Still it sounds like a daring move to go into phone-size devices, even those are shrinking by the day, and tablets yes tablets (though they are of today not connecting to my arduinos. Yes the shift to smaller and even more powerful devices is certainly happening. But do we see musicians or performers that put all these things to different use? Throughout the recent history of experimental music, new instruments could be directly related to changes in the music forms and stylistics in many ways. From the invention of a cigar case guitar around the time of the American Civil War, to the overwhelming effect of recording devices (recorders, tapes and disk players, microphone technology) at the beginning of the 20th century, to the introduction of computers half a century ago, and so on… But now suddenly the roller coaster seems to be stuck in one of those scary loopholes. Is it just repeating, with expected variations, running over and over again the same - too short - sequence? Or could there be something else at hand, a new development that does not show itself fully yet. Something we can only perceive after the change of the dominant present-day paradigms?
Is the puzzling attitude of an apparently spoiled and arrogant audience, that displays at the same time a super pragmatic and tolerant stance, “oh we heard it all before and nothing can surprise us anymore” a simple masquerade for a general feeling of sitting in limbo? No one has emotional and vexed reactions but all applaud politely at the end of each deja vu performance, presentation or display. What's left for the artists aged 40+ and more, making comtemporary computer music and visuals? Well, they can continue with an endlessly similar series of workshops and concerts with or without kids, here and there an installation, a lecture in a media festival or for hastily assembled students, a too long article and later maybe a too short book documenting all the things I've mentioned . In the meantime one has to think about the next piece to be broadcast on the radio. And speaking of radio, can radio itself change to meet the demands of new genres and paradigms? You really think so?
“Thinking of Katastrofa”, a piece prepared for the radio broadcast on Vltava Radiocustica 26 Února 2011, raised a couple of issues . These were related mainly to the idea of “making a piece” as well as “playing it on the radio”. But to state it now, once and for all, artists cannot change radio anymore. Taking this one step further, we have to ask if there can be a “radio artist” nowadays, or if radio is its own form, if something called “radio art” can exist. Though at one time this was possible,it does not make any sense any more. But let's give you what was promised: an intermezzo, a description of a small sound piece that was broadcast at one time. <http://www.rozhlas.cz/radiocustica/projekt/_zprava/855051>
The composition consists of 4 smaller pieces, all derived from collecting data with environmental sensors. In order to collect the data,sensors were connected to a computer to make recordings of input over long periods of time. From the data one could notice very slow changes in the values of light, temperature, humidity, and gasses in the air. At the same time we were recording a series of very small sound samples (10-30 milliseconds) at the place of registration. Then a computer program sonified it further. The sonification consisted of the timed playback of the recorded sounds, with the resonant features controlled by the sensor values. For a more specialized reader: we patched up a kind of non-dogmatic 'adaptive concatenative sound synthesis' [ACSS] with a very imprecise Max-msp sound buffer, sampling only after the attacks of specific sounds, and during a silent period. The resulting sound buffer was modified by the 6 sensors simultaneously. We rendered it as a soundfile. Afterwards there was hardly any editing done, just some basic cleaning up of clicks and cuts (yes, we are trying to avoid both the editing and the occurrence of clicks and cuts…). Most of the differences you can hear across the pieces stem from the different places where the recordings were made (or how the buffer was filled up with different environmental resonances). The first piece was made with data and sounds outside the gallery Skolska28, in the centre of Praha. The second one has the same sounds but was using the data from Staropramenne Street in Smichov. The third piece contains data from the Krknose Mountains, and contains samples of the strong winter wind there. The final piece was done at home, and uses data and sounds from particular inside and outside environments in Zizkov. The whole group was assembled as a short preliminary study for environmental sensors.
Ah. The first problem to overcome was the difference between the time plan for the data recording (36 to 72 hours for each location), and the sensor-controlled playback for the length of the resulting pieces, which had to fit into the radio broadcast (10 mins for each piece). When fast-forwarding the data up to 500 times to render and record the sound, one can only be amazed by the resulting patterns that occur spontaneously a posteriori. While listening to it, many more ideas for different syntheses and a divergent handling of the material spring to mind. New approaches for composing with these data impetuously disclose themselves, as the sonification creates its own patterns on the computer, both by the automaticity of the process and the manipulation by the musician.
The original plan had been to make a live 1 hour recording, with similar sensors outside and inside the studio, and luckily this idea was abandoned. But one keeps thinking of longer renderings/transmissions, within a more ambient style (but not harmonic or linear in progress/tempo either), or reiterations in which several musicians can treat the same materials in a different way. Or a large distributed network with similar sensors that produce the millions of grains needed to make interesting sonic streams, whirling, clashing, decaying, generating new shapes and envelopes… And much more…
“Thinking of Katastrofa” provoked something, escaped from its intended setup, and almost dragged itself elsewhere. It sparked different thinking about sonification and in an extended but similar way, about visualisation. The piece started to realize the title, and became a real 'study', a search for something new, but also a study in a different sense, leading away from the definition of sonification as “the use of nonspeech audio to convey information” see: <http://sonify.psych.gatech.edu/publications/pdfs/1999-nsf-report.pdf>. Actually the latter text is interesting in its early attempt to define sonification from an artistic point of view. There is also the general wiki entry as an orientation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonification>. For more recent views and updates, read Katharina Vogt, Alberto de Campo, Gerhard Eckel's “An introduction to sonification and its application to theoretical physics”, see <http://old.iem.at/projekte/publications/paper/intro/intro.pdf>. A more systematic and conceptual approach you can find in Thomas Hermann (2008). Taxonomy and definitions for sonification and auditory display, Proc. ICAD 2008, IRCAM, France. For some comments and to download the pdf go to: <http://sonification.de/son/definition>. Definitely, computer artists are becoming more interested in sonification as a form by itself, trying to overcome its speculative past, replacing it with a model based approach borrowed from the hard(er) sciences. But what can an artistic attitude or a new creative approach add to sonificiation? (For now we will not follow the rather rigid model by Thomas Hermann, mentioned before).
Consider sonification/visualisation as something similar to playing an instrument, bringing out the sensitivity of the environment, using whatever makes sense from the whole scale of contemporary sound and music practices. Then sonification comes much closer to its own independent purpose: to create a kind of new knowledge. The given data are not treated speculatively but as a 'driver' for the generation of new data/information. By zooming in or out we see different patterns emerge over time. Comparing these both on the paradigmatic (parallell in other set ups or environments) and the syntagmatic axes (evolving in time), and with different sensor systems, new forms and expressions can come about as well. Again, paradigmatic changes in the arts can occur when the tools change, in combination with a new approach for different content and method for expressivity. Given the dead-end-street situation of the current arts, maybe the breakdown of the more romantic historical line of thought is a welcome change. But how to open up a completely new environment where nothing is a given , and traditional tools and methods don't apply?
The famous question by the land artist Robert Smithson “Could one say that art degenerates as it approaches gardening?” (Robert Smithson, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” Artforum, September 1968.) suggests a more diversified discussion, considering experimental operations within both the arts and sciences. The blunt objection will always be “but is it still art?”. There is no suitable reply, and the question leaves every more radical or experimental artist behind, perplexed and speechless, contemplating her/his indeterminant status. These issues in relationship to all creative arts were discussed in a meeting at IPEM, December 2011, organized by Prof. Marc Leman, and including his colleages and doctoral students . The gathering allowed a conversation that began to relate sonification and creativity to knowledge production, with a specific character related to the arts, a step that would have been impossible without the transdisciplinary framework.
Sonification, in a more traditional but collaborative approach, was centered on an illustrative perspective. The next level can be seen as a more active one, fostering the development of activities, not only inspired by the data but driven or controlled by them, or even transformed in more abstract patterns. As already discussed, this new approach could open up the possibility of very different ways for creativity toevolve. The potential of using generated data, generating patterns, and an algorithm together is that eventually, the process could lead to a synthesis created by the environment itself, which could then be fed back into it as an independent system or organism. This would requirenew technology operating at a different physical level. Forget the computer, sensor, microphones, speakers, networks and yes radios that we have now… and … stop stop! Ha! finally we are back in utopia…
With “Thinking of Katastrofa”, a very modest first step was made in this direction. Probably it was a catastrophe, thinking of it now, like … if we could have suggested a meaningful synthesis, maybe we did, but for sure we all know there never was any meaningful synthesis and there will never be. All the years I have left will be needed to get deeper into the consequences of this first attempted infirm and crippled creation. Writing this text won't do it, but maybe making as many different works as possible that explore and express or fantasize about as many different ecological phenomena as possible… Ah but old and young fools as we always will be, what did we complain about before? Maybe much more is needed for an overhaul of our dear arts, more than the existing disciplinary knowledge, more than yet another poetica, more than just another set of methods, more than relentless work on other sonifications… [A note about the title of the mentioned piece: As there is hardly anything dramatic happening in nature, the idea of a catastrophe is ironical. Within an etymological sense we wanted to relate to both the older meaning that hints at a “reversal of what is expected”, as well as to a second idea of “to overturn, to come to an end”.]
The thing with media is that they don't end so much as get reinvented. My mother's television is technically and mechanically totally different from the set she used to have in the 1970s, or 1990s. The current version comes with a digital hub that serves telephone, internet, television and radio, and even integrates a recording device. She does not have to turn the antenna in the right direction anymore (the most exciting device at the house for us as kids) and doesn't even have to get out of her armchair to switch the channels. This remarkable digital makeover and convergence of networks does not surprise her at all, and she is still sees it as her television . Television, like radio and the phone, like internet, are for that reason persistent, though they are constantly changing.
Of course my mother is not supposed to make something creatively out of this overhaul or reconditioning, but in a sense artists are. Of course it is safer to hide that weird species away in a vague category, 'media artists', than to expect that they would remodel their trade whenever the tools are changing. A common strategy deployed often to save disciplinarity. Again, as Robert Smithson once wrote: “Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.” <http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/void.htm> But that, or course, is only partially true. For one thing, it is an example of how certain disciplines are stuck in their own past and self-centred sublimation. It is easy to see the connection between conceptual art, electronic art, new music and video art, computer art and a continuous imaginative interest in ubiquity, remote sensing, interaction, networks of any kind. The new materials and instruments developed are leading inevitably to a complete reinvention of what we now see as technological art . That can include the development of a necessary transdisciplinary content. In the meantime, the solo shows will go on, the virtuosos will be in the spotlight applauded by large audiences. I will spare you an excursion into what is generally called the Romantic Order, which functions as an historical critique on art and technology. You can find this explained rather well by Sacha Kagan, in a recent work called “Art and Sustainability: Connecting Patterns for a Culture of Complexity.” (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2011, p. 68 and following). With this we can dive into a last aspect of change: what can be seen as useful materials for a different future of media arts?
To answer this question it makes sense to look at 3 areas of change, each redesigning itself as transdisciplinary.
a.
Within the arts there has been a strong ecological presence since the 1960s, with several surges and ebbs . See for instance: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_art> and <http://greenmuseum.org/>, of interest is certainly the online book <http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/>. As argued above, what seems to be happening lately is the establishment of a network of organizations and artists that not only work with ecologies and environments as an inspiration, but as an exclusive material, subsuming the 'natural' (ouch!) processes withing their works. There is a strong connection with the open source and creative commons movements within media, and an interest in sustainability and longer term processes. This leads to a different creative approach , essentially with a collaborative DIY method disconnected from the traditional modern art production/organization/publication triumverate.
b.
When talking about artistic research and sonificiation, we have to mention the longer tradition built on Pierre Schaeffer's work about the classification of sound and on soundscapes by the Canadian group around R. Murray Schafer, Barry Truax and others. Truax's interest in granular synthesis (also used by computer music pioneers such as Iannis Xenakis and Curtis Roads) definitely contributed to bringing together computer music and media artists. This can also be said of the growing interest in the work of David Tudor, and the computer renderings of his Rainforest pieces after his death . The focus on developing original instruments with subsequent new techniques is in this case completely replaced by theaction of the environment on the sonic realisations, which can delineate any space and includes anything other than humans, natural or not. Before, I could have referred to sound art rather sarcastically as a product of late and lost postmodernism, as media art's emperor's clothes (but I didn't or did my editor cut it?). Surely, by itself sound art is a little cowardly; it has not really developed new techniques or methods for music. There is a problematic tension at the heart of sound art. Though it is highly technologically defined, perversely using microphones and recording devices so specialized that no differences between them can be heard, the artists making the work act like they perceive pure nature without meditation– oops,uh, I mean mediation. Databases are different from sales point style online shops (thinking of radio aporee <http://aporee.org/maps/> and <http://aporee.org> but you cannot do this hat trick twice). More importantly, sound art makes a complete counter movement to academic and professional music. Great musicians have special instruments: either unique and expensive– think of Niccolo Paganini's Il Cannone violin; or unique and trashy– think of the Sonic Youth guitars, which were stolen in Brussels. Traditional musicians develop an idiosyncratic skill on their instruments. But sound artists only have expensive gear, nothing more. The only skills they seem to show are to sit, wait, and listen. Oh, yes - and they connect cables, position microphones, turn potentiometers and push buttons on and off. And then they let you listen to whatever was recorded. So basically they sell you back your own reflection of your own perception. And yes: that is probably why you like it! Exactly, that is what is needed nowadays and that is why it is the second area of interest for innovation. For its immateriality, realism and reflective attitude. And its uncritical use of expensive technology, to be deployed to sonify a completely mediated natural (ouch, not again!) setting. Respect!
c.
The next (and final) technology is smaller than small; it is nano, and it takes us all the way back to where we began When working with populations of small bees, there are ways of monitoring them via general and coarse sensors, measuring the environment and the behaviour of the insects in it. But what a relief it would be for the artist-researcher to be able to go to the wee tiny level, where interactions among bees can be directly observed, and the impact of activities (foraging, cleaning, making honey, dealing with invading parasites…) can be immediately experienced. Getting this embedded in an environment would also mean that the current difference, distance or absence of the observer could be overcome, allowing the observer to better merge with the ambience of the given context.D digitalisation provided a complete remodeling of the perception of an analog world. The advances in nanotechnology promise us the same: completely different perceptions and possibilities. But for now it is a specialist's job. Operating at a nano level means working in specialized labs with a few experts and a lot of experimenting. A lot of money is also necessary, and isan outspoken goal oriented involvement. And there is a lot of skepticism about the dangers we are now creating without knowing or looking ahead, like in genetics. But that is for another text. Probably the scientific-industrial apparatus is too busy with pattenting to set up camp with open source and creative-commons minded DIY media artists, though we share the same interests. Several nanolabs are working with sonification and visualisation, and traditionally take a designer for that purpose. But again, when extending the illustrative part, experimenting with the technology within a relevant environment and being able to synthesize the outcome within that same environment is certainly a challenge for both practices.
Imagine the above model applied as a nano system. Data analysis happens via bio sensors and probes, stored in a memory, or transmitted into one, that synthesizes patterns, where algorithms can interact to be rendered within the same environment as a set of nano actuators on (a)biotic components. Sound could become so different. But would it still be sound? Remember: is it still art?. Would it still be radio when it is transmitted into the smear of cosmetics on your skin? Photosynthetically powered and further transmitted as we shake hands. Maybe these questions are silly, but there is no way to find out other than to play with them. Within 10 years all will be set and settled again, protected and patented, functionalized in applications. Better to get it in line now with the other stuff we are playing with. And mostly let's bring it into an ecological media art context. Why not become a bee? And dance to the rhythms in the hive, aperiodically. Bees are both performers and audience. Sure it is art. And afterwards, let's shake hands, spread the feeling. Make 20-60,000 new friends. A generative nano radio.
Givan Bela, 3-kings-day 2012. Hranice CZ.