A response to Saturday nights networked discussion featuring Matthew Fuller in London, Eric Kluitenburg in Amsterdam, with Sue Ballard & Symposium delegats in Wellington, 27 / 6 / 09.

At the outset of his thoughts on digital and materiality, Matthew launched the topic with some thoughts on ‘immateriality’ as a way of approaching the material, – a proposition of opposites that got the discourse away, to my mind, on a somewhat confused metaphysical tack. Eric in Amsterdam responded, with various references and abstractions including a definition of materiality, from Latin/French roots, ie; mater = mother, riality = reality, materiality = the mother of reality; a meaning suggesting matter as something substantial and solid. A meaning on the surface that appears to make sense relative to its opposite, immateriality.

If we accept the premise then, firstly, that all matter is essentially vibration – a deduction of physical science and a long-held esoteric belief in relation to life in this solar system; and secondly, that the body, as Eric pointed out, reproduces itself regularly on a cellular level ­– replicating cells each time with such fractional difference as to account over time for the ageing process of all living things – then this knowledge surely joins us to the universal ephemeral principle, that every living thing inexorably proceeds as a process of change, towards it’s moment of death and decay.

If we accept this understanding, materiality and immateriality, along with a host of other polarities, fall under the planetary law of opposites, where one is inextricably entwined with the other ; life/death, creation/destruction, visible/invisible, dark/light, on/off, and so forth. This is the fabric of life in the third and fourth dimensions as we know it – ensnared between pairs of opposites, caught in the dualistic web so aptly described as ‘veils of illusion, MAYA’ by Buddhist and Vedic ancients – and so potently portrayed in Plato’s cave parable, as ephemeral, transient reality, a view far removed, and to my mind truer than the ‘mother-of-reality’ idea that matter is solid and real.

How then to bridge this with the ADA theme of digital and materiality – one abstract and ephemeral, the other grounded in physical material – so it develops constructively?

The binary digital world is composed of zeros and ones. Zero, an expression of nought = nothingness, and one, an expression of 1 = unity. Nought and one, continuing the above line of discussion, imply ephemeral and permanent, nothingness and being, but if we think of these as complimentaries brought into a synergistic relationship, then we are engaged with the triadic rather than the dualistic.

Marrying the seemingly disparate opposites of material and immaterial, physical and digital in a synergistic relationship – active, passive and reconciling, enables transmutation and evolution. This law of three, the same ancient principle re-interpreted by Hegel as the dialectic – (thesis – the active proposition, antithesis – the negative opposing view, and synthesis – the reconciling force to create a new result) – animates an exchange between opposites, and provides the condition for creative development. This is the same tessellating design principle that exploits the equilateral triangle so beautifully in Islamic design. A dynamic principle to energise and catalyse situations, concepts, technologies, collaborations etc, etc with. And with unique results.

This was elegantly demonstrated in Julian Priest’s conceptually evocative beachfire and digital output piece, where heat, generated by the fire on the beach triggered a wireless connection to the internet to switch the zero = absence of heat, to digit one = presence of heat; a poetic metaphor for bridging opposite states of immaterial / material, invisible / visible, nothingness and being, darkness and light.

Reading the zero as a circle, and the one as one, gives to both the power of unity, a marriage of opposites. Bravo !

Phil Dadson

1/7/09

Gentle and unassuming, Phil’s presentation began with a tale from the Upanishads of a man, his son, some water and some salt. That physical substance which dissolves into transparency yet can be tasted in everything it touches. As analogous to a principle of the physical essence of being, it demonstrates that often strangely ephemeral sense we can tend to have of ourselves. This and other concepts of immateriality, apparent or otherwise, would echo through later discussions and questions – always haunted in some way by the question of how we see ourselves in the so-called ‘virtual’ and ‘physical’ worlds.

Phil’s spoke of his work as being grounded in the physical. Yet his fascination with sound began with that most ephemeral of mediums, radio. As a boy buried beneath the bed covers, listening out for transmissions across the ocean from aliens and God, apparitions were provided in the form of the strangely remote voices of an American gospel outpost in the South American Andes, amongst others. Shortwave radio made it possible to grasp that there was a whole world out there, without leaving home.

Early works such as Earthworks experimented with global communication in realtime. Subsequent radio communication works, A.R.T. (amateur radio transmissions) for 8 ham radio stations, and Short & Medium Waves, a short-wave listening performance, struck collaborations with ham operators world wide, as well as with local artists such as performers Keiron Lyons, Bruce Barber and others. Around the same time as Earthworks (1971), he developed graphic score charts such as Blood & Bone and Play, both of which set the stage for investigations into rhythm. Works which I read as incorporating an in-built perception of our physical realities – tied to a rhythm of action and rest periods.

In what seems to have been a significant moment for Phil, another set of natural rhythms revealed itself during a quiet walk while visiting a lighthouse keeper friend. Coming across the croaking and clicking choruses of frogs, Phil listened to hear the waves grow louder and louder and then quiet – each time renewed by a single croak before the responses would build and bounce into a new cacophony. Nature signalling it’s need and attraction for it’s own kind. After a period of quiet, Dadson began adding his own croaks, initiating new waves of amphibian communications into what would soon become the evening air.

From these sensitivities to these natural rhythmic phenomena grew an interest in similar principles – different parts sounded by different players, performed so as to create a continuous line. A principle of rhythmic sound-making that Phil would later come to be able to name as ‘hocketing’. A system found throughout nature it is also therefore found in sound practices of cultures around the world.

Works shown included Footstep Hocket, the addictive rhythmic splicing of foot, shoe, gumboot and flipper stomping across a grid of a six monitor video monitor display in 1998 at Te Papa. Several video excerpts Global Hockets, as performed (also in 1998), at the Te Papa Theatre before the work travelled to many international sound and media art festivals. Something of an extravaganza media piece, the work was developed over approximately 18 months, and brought together collaborators such as the visual animation work of a Michael Saup of Supreme Particles and later Mike Hodgeson was brought in to assist on  refining the sampling and triggering technology involved. A German artist whose SGI-based animation work was co-joined with the audio performance only 3 weeks before it’s premiere. In an investigation of finding an interface between, humourous, noise and electronics, radio-controlled ‘scuttlebugs’ whizzed around the floor creating sounds from their little hardwired backpacks of CD players and speakers, while the four From Scratch musicians bopped and swayed about amongst a somewhat pre-industrial-looking set of drum-type of instruments. Included there were instruments viewable on Dadson’s sonicsfromscratch site such as the Drum Station, the Nunndrum as well as many others from Phil’s rich repertoire of unusual and invented instruments. These finely honed hocket-based performances had something of a shamanistic quality to them in the ecstatic energy, concentration, and stamina with which their alternating rhythmic consistencies are carried out. Accompanied by various visuals including details of images of slices through human bodies, Michael Saup’s graphics amongst others. A complex work, more details of this performance and those involved can be found here: <http://www.sonicsfromscratch.co.nz/dadsonics.php?id=37>.

Born from Stratch Orchestra, consisting of about 50 members, From Scratch usually consisted of about 3 to 4 members, and based many works around this nature-based principle of hocketing. Written on the whiteboard, Phil had inscribed the terms ‘Radiation, Reception and Reflection’. A rumination which in my current frame of mind I like to think about as a reflection on a way of relating to life within the biosphere of our shared planet. As Julian Priest had pointed out to me once, “All energy comes from the sun”. A striking realisation in terms of it’s ensuing provision of a relatively simple angle from which to understand the otherwise extremely complex webs of life, and our place in those systemic ecologies.

During final questions a current and ongoing work called BODYTOK was quietly revealed. In a refreshingly human and humorous approach, Phil has been gathering recordings from volunteers for some years now, of sounds unique to that person’s body. It might be the creak of a neck, a click of an elbow, a rattling jaw. Or maybe you have found you have resonating or radio-receptive teeth? Whatever specialties you have been developing, sign up now and gain your chance to be weaved into a rhythmic weft of bodily joy. With 80 recordings and the project already demonstration mode he may not be so far away so don’t be slow!

Trudy Lane

Phil Dadson / Sonics from Scratch

http://www.sonicsfromscratch.co.nz/

This is the YouTube clip that Eric posted:

WARNING: THIS IS YET TO UNDERGO EDITING & TIDYING (!)…

Peter Gorman – looking at radio transmitters aka Tetsuo Kogawa. Simplest transmitter and radio transmitter. Tetsuo redesigned it for him.
Project shown: Radio Pendulum – Image of installation displayed: 2 large screens, noisy images derived from 2 tv transmitters mounted on pendulum room, with 3 radio transmitters and 2 tv transmitters mounted on a pendulum.
Project shown: Sound reactive video wall -  Radio feed. Photo resistors on video projection. People playing with transmitter seeing.
Project shown: The Evolution of the Fustigator – fashionable perspex box . Performance at a closing in Dunedin.
Project shown: Volt – sound collaboration – first collab last weekend in Dunedin.
Project shown: Phase Loop Plasma – pure data nad oscilloscope – image of moving fluorescent looking light pulses w related sound.

Audence Question: What is a Strange Attractor?  — 1 minute definition: Zero volume in phase space where a system will gravitate. the onset of turbulence in a flow. At a certain velocity turbulence will occur. A vortex is created – around that zero-space point. Which is strange because – why there? – LOUD APPLAUSE AND CLAPS and WOO noises.

Emil McAvoy – Artist, academic, writer, freelance curator. Teaches at Victoria and Massey. Curatorial Project: Archives New Zealand, Scholarship Project (to work with it’s photography archives). The archive is a conundrum, and present those to you within these images. Images of 2 men and a boy outside of temporary looking wooden building – state housing. Interested in the politics of digitizing content and the access and understanding. Got permission to use the National Publicity studios Collection – a 1927-1987 massive collection of government sponsored photos. Filed as negatives and completely analog. Interested in image streams and sets; colliding images; understanding images in different ways. Using random process and chance to create new relationships.

The images show is what you would expect to see — propagandistic — but no metadata or informaiton about what is in the photos. Scholarship remit to apply new media to collection and show it to be relevant. Tour manager and publication manager. Dixon street flats image and lots of sheep. An image like — framing of women and maori interesting to him. Woman and girl holding a golf club and stripping over the edge of a hill in high grass. A bunch of floating archival objects – representing a (highly constructed) view of new zealand. Image of burning hillside – documenting colonisation. Structuring colonisation. View of waxeye bird on hand near a maori-carved smoking pipe. Images set up to create ‘no.8 wire’ and ‘man alone’ and sideways moment of the slippages and why can’t I stop looking at it (image with bird). Hearing the call of a collection and responding to that, to make the collection sing.

Morgan Barnard – Glad to be involved. Interested in the improvisation field of live data and interested in using terms of cinema. Exploring roots of improvisation in order to come to an understanding of his practse which is in the live performance area. Looking at film grammar and it’s motifs in a way to work with it in real time. Worlds associated with improvisation -  ‘in the moment’, ‘off the cuff’, ‘random’ – but it is about being prepared and being able to adapt in the moment. Working in interactivity – audience creating their own way to navigate a space. Real-time compositional approach for cinematic content. George E. Lewis, “Jazz put improvisation back on the world table”… Editing tools – the physicality of celluloid images. When at school 8GB was amazing, now has 4GB in pocket. Electronic signals – tape-based. Can’t insert edits into, to improvise. Digital has multiple layers and timelines. Now very sophisticated. But still not that different from a tape – linear. Looking for new tools.
Video played: A live performance. People from the audience bringing things up to him to film and display as a part of the work. So was video sampling during the live performance. He’d had a dislocated thumb, so had to shoot from camera. This was the starting point into the exploration for this area. Onscreen: people advertising for a flat. When the audience brought objects, he would film and live manipulate them on screen. Stack of records at venue (mighty mighty) was used. Anything in environment fair game. Interested in taxonomy of visual language. Wide-shot next to a wideshot — explore footage that is heavily tagged.

Max Bellamy – From Dunedin school of art. [nb - Pres was a quite densely written summary of his works, difficult to paraphrase, this below text is unrepresentative]. Project showng: Microcosms – young artist grown up with playstation and geting frustrated with feeling like he was spending a lifetime in front of a screen and editing suite. Wanted to get his hands dirty and make things. References to baudrillard and zizek. Relationships investigated and attractions between modern condition. Re-authored a pastiche of banal meaning. Channel-surfacing. Presence and might of miliary unrealised. Effective collective. Project showng: The last infatuation – Images of close-ups of diorama models and sets. Bodily relationships explored – a head-high pocket universe. The screen and mediaxunous – or intermedia. Perceived social barriers to socio-political. Reframing of statistics into a more striking and digestable format. Works to be in an exhibition called Preview in 2009.

Quesitons: Models ordered from all over the world as a conscious reflection of subject matter. Feeling of too much time behind the screen led him to wanting to get his hands dirty.

Stella Brennan and Zita Joyce – Showing exhibition realised in ISEA 2008, which Su was not able to attend – despite having largely connected the thinking for the works for the show – due to arrival of young charlotte (daughter). So Zita and Stella showing the show to Su. Su was at Transmediale – discussion with Guna as to how to represent a country without doing the expo approach. Realised couldn’t do by herself so talked to Zita and Stella and pulled it under the ADA umbrella. Show was at the Substation. Directors there have a history of being imprisoned before, after or during that working role. So a very different cultural context. Lovely but late-waking technicians. Images of installation setup work. Et Al’s installation – and Alex’s work being installed. Opening night – Reaction to sheep as exotic “I’ve seen these animals at the zoo” and “how are the farmers remotely controlling the sheep?”. The great tornado potato dish as modelled by Zita Joyce. A view of Alex’s “Composition for Farmer…” work installed. Kentara Yamada’s work shown, Et Al’s work which read interestingly in this cultural context. Chainlink fence had to be custom made. Adam Willet’s works installed. Opening night with the huge concert going on alongside the opening, on the same stre. The star  performer there was a failed american idol entrant. Sony Ericsson and SinTel had organised the event and shut off the whole street. Had to get a walkway created for the opening to proceed. Substation was annoyed as they had been unable to get permits to do street festival for years, yet allowed Sony Ericsson. Images of the sound performance evening – including Adam Willets and Nathan Thompson (with Su feeding in to perform via skype at 3am NZ time) performances. Image of book launch and panel discussion at the National Museum. Images of the fantastic radio spectrum show – SPEKTR! – by Marko Peljhan there (orginally commissioned by Honor Harger as part of the ’08 AV Festival I believe) (http://www.isea2008singapore.org/exhibitions/pe_spektr.html). Images of tiger balm park (Haw Par Villa – http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/sets/925506/).

Laura Preston – Curatorial Project: The Future is Unwritten. [An eloquent preso - a publishing of her actual paper would be more representative]. Asking whether there might be a new curatorial model in addition to those currently in wider use. A shifting away from an institutional framing of the curator. The art historical approach that looks as a specfiic period, artist. Or of providing a space and letting an artist produce – which takes on the art market pressures. Paul [missed name], “there has been a shift away from the 60s view of the curator as an intellectural working in position of [opposition?] to the institution “. Wyston Curnow as an example of this. The view now is of a more centralised position as on a wider stage, with more social and political connections. What curators are vs what they do. Now many forms beyond space. empahsis still on exhibition, catalogue… many institutions have moved beyond illustration. Curating is adaptive version [...]. This is where she would like to position herself – working betwen institution and space providing popularist – build on conversations and adapt to cultural currencies. without servicing a communication expectations. Important that outcomes are unpredictable, to provide space for criticality.

In the show there is a change in perceptions of a curator. Little discourse on it’s practise. Works may not be seen. Political impact knowing the future. Based in own practise. Space for interdisciplinary dialogue. Both for what art can do for that field of inquiry as well as re-engage art’s purpose. Adam Gallery – doubleweight. Great performative potential. Knowledge capital – continually reminds itself. The university is a free space for critical engagement. TFU is an ongoing conversation across various spaces – email, skype, curatorial role verbal space and editing. providing clear access points for the view. artists – participation through to self-determined. enable multiple spaces. failure as a disruptive ingredient. As a collective we do not know what is yet to come.The exhib is a temporal experiment and based on unpredictable reception from public.

The history of institutional critique – seen as instrument for bourgeois that relies on co-opting. The politics are aware of and expanding on an institutional critique – extending to the web.  The politics of aesthetics and the aesthetic discussion of politics. Reflecting on the state of the world, not the state of art. A proposal for how things can be seen. an offering, not a hand out, but tools. Opens on the 10th of July.

Tim Coster – [Difficult to hear - write-up missing detail]. 3 minutes enough! Thinking about the way technology ubiquitous and we are forgetting the analog. Use of live room recordings as a distortion, and random layering of things. Looking into a single space and single time. What is important to him. Use of technology to have certain results. Quite simple parts. Field of instrument recording – short loops chosen for singular aspects of the sound. Recombining and composing on the spot. Precisely placed at the time, but brings up the aesthetics of the technology. With tape disks or distortion, there is a nostalgic representation of where sound comes from which he sees as problematic. Working away from a digital editing way of making an audio piece where you have precise control over placement and duration. Looking for less conrolled way to create sounds. Studio vs. live and making a conscious decision either way. The situations dictate the work. Kind of implicit in the work. Q: Use of room recordings and shifting the pitch — layering — mentioned PD’s binaries. A: I think the treatment of tape and speed – is exactly what is – the two create the space. Work at ELAM on hockets – didn’t work but still influenced the way his layering up of things onto each other works. People think of granule synthesis of being a software – but is made up of the particles of sounds. Su – environment itself as the material. The sense that each of these different things are very real practises. Operating within a sense of material practises.

The intro I did gather was all about Quartz. So for this little post I plan to recap the topics covered, hopefully provide a rough step-by-step. I suppose this is to stand as a small review and a reference for those who wish to recall some Quartz basics.

The first discussion revolved around the accessibility and scope of Quartz Composer. The distribution, although limited to Mac Os X, is included directly on the OS install disc. The integration with the OS is quite tight, especially when you look at the simplicity behind things like screen saver settings. The libraries required to run the core Quartz compiled files are all right there on your Mac Os, waiting for you to use them.

We kicked pretty much straight into a tutorial here, so following will be a small pointed list of most of the primary steps taken:

• First we started up a blank composition, after taking a peek at an RSS template

• Brief overview of the layout, and within the patch creator panel we briefly looked over some common components. Some categories of patches to recall are:

Filters – Image processing
Environment – OpenGL related utilities
Modifiers – Data manipulation
Programming – More advanced rendering techniques
Renderer – Display primitives

• Add a clear patch, set to desired colour
• Add a Sprite from the renderer group
• Briefed over the coordinate system, which is a grid centered on (0,0) the upper right would be (1,1) and the lower left would be (-1,-1) (re: Cartesian Coordinate System)
• To play with this & see results quickly, we added a Mouse controller, and linked the x/y to the x/y on the sprite, and we could move the sprite around with our mouse
• Remove the mouse controller
• Now add in a Image with String generator patch, piping the image to the image on the Sprite patch – however the text looks funny, so we use the display width/height from the Image with String and pipe that to the width/height of the Sprite
• We quickly took a peak at the font setting, this allowed us to take a look at the different panels on the patch inspector
• Movement! The Interpolation patch was used (with a start of -2 and end of +2) with the result piped into the x position of our sprite
• The Image Downloader was then added, for this the URL pointed to our picture on the web, feeding the Image result into a new sprite. We used the (yellow) numbers in the top right of the display type patches to change their layers, this allows us to have our text sprite, above the image sprite that we just added. Using the Image Dimensions patch, you can ensure your image has the correct width/height (pipe the image from the downloader into the dimension, then pipe the width/height into the width/height for the sprite)
• I went a small step further here and used the aspect ratio, in combo with the Math patch to create a “full screen” version (would stretch to the container)

About here is when we had a small break for coffee. The session had gone quite smoothly up till now, and with the fun tweets everyone happen to be reading throughout the session. it proved to be quite an interesting morning to be presenting stuff based on live feeds.

• Morgan briefed over the usage of Yahoo! Pipes which quickly fed into a new patch, RSS Downloader
• The RSS feed comes back as a “structure” in Quartz, and for this we used the Structure Index Member to select one item from our list of results. We had to then chain this result down to another Structure Key Member which chose a particular section to list, in our case it would be the tweet. The Structure * Member patches simply select smaller sections of a structure, so depending on the feed you may need more of these
• Our first entry was displaying so we added an Interpolation patch that takes the result from a Structure Count patch (which was attached to our rss feed) as it’s end point (minus 1 via the Math patch). The result was then piped to the first Structure Index Member patch as the index. This allowed the tweets to get cycled through, starting with 0 up to n-1 (re: 0 based indexing)

This is about when everyone broke out into small groups to see if they could either make something cool happen, or just to simply get the rest of theirs working.

Overall, I think it was a helpful workshop. The issues covered were enough of the basics to allow anyone to really quickly jump in and see how the system works. The library of patches to use is huge, and will obviously take lots of time to know them all, let alone how to use them all. The scope of the presentation was urban screen, and although we may not have touched heavily on that during the part of the workshop I was attending; I think showing how to quickly use an application, that is readily available to anyone with access to a Mac, to push out live media, either for personal use (re: screensaver) or for a public environment.

8pm Film Screening, curated by Alex MacKinnon

Thistle Hall, cnr Cuba and Arthur Streets

* screenings:

* Live performances with film: