Metaphone

Posted by dktus on June 6, 2013 · Leave a Comment 

Interactive exhibition and performance, Sat June 8, 17.00-20.00

Private views and experiment sessions, Wed June 5-Sat June 21.

Metaphone is an ongoing exploration led by Vygandas Simbelis, PhD student in interactive art at KTH, based around a hand crafted and electronically controlled physical machine, painting technique, and sonic art. The machine picks up sensor signals from people and its surrounding environment, and based on these signals it produces a series of unique spiral paintings on a big canvas. In the second stage of the process, audio is generated from the picture by analysing the visual image through colour recognition and translating it into a musical soundscape.

The project is theoretically grounded in questions around authorship, and whether it can be shared between artists, observers and the artwork itself, where contemporary art practices such as mixing, open-source, reflection, interaction and collaboration have become a norm. The project is also conceptually reflecting on modernistic approaches and the synthesis of colour and sound, visual music phenomena, psychological affects of colour.

The biosensors register movement, pulse and skin conductance – the latter two relating to emotional arousal. The machine creates a traditional art form – colorful paintings – which can be contrasted with the pulsating, living body of the participants and the machine-like movements of the Metaphone. Participants interacting with the machine get their own painting drawn for them – an activity spurring a whole range of questions around bio-sensing technologies. The participants engaging with Metaphone have to agree to share their personal data, thereby expanding the interactive discourse while questioning the extension of the body with the machine and involving participants with public exposition of aspects of their inner worlds.

This particular instance of the Metaphone has been developed by Vygandas Simbelis in collaboration with Anders Lundström and Jordi Solsona.

For more details and images see:
http://www.metaphone.net or http://www.simbelis.com/project/metaphone/

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