Re: [-empyre-] "synaesthetic media"

[Nancy Paterson <Nancy.Paterson@senecac.on.ca>]

The reference: Waterworth, John (1996) ‘Creativity and Sensation: The Case for ‘Synesthetic Media’ 
[Online] Available: http://www.informatik.umu.se/~jwworth/sensedoc.html

RE: 
>What interests me is that such work is evoking human 
> synaesthesia through a non-human process - via the particular 
> audio/visual crossovers offered by digital/analog media 
> technologies, 
> rather than the crossovers generated in our neural structures. 

I  wondered about robot sense experiences - location, navigation, responses etc.  I guess the obvious one would be vision - turning 2D into 3D in order to track location - for example. What is the relevance/significance of these robotic sense experiences in and of themselves - is there any relevance beyond whatever responses they may trigger in human observers?
Nancy

----- Original Message -----
From: Mitchell Whitelaw <mitchell.whitelaw@canberra.edu.au>
Date: Thursday, December 9, 2004 11:31 pm
Subject: [-empyre-] "synaesthetic media"

> 
> 
> On 10/12/2004, at 2:14 AM, Nancy Paterson wrote:
> 
> > “the most salient and vital aspect of interacting with computer 
> > systems is consistently overlooked, that is, the importance of 
> > computer systems as perceptual rather than conceptual tools. 
> Insofar 
> > as people interact with them, computer systems function primarily 
> as 
> > sensual transducers which I term synaesthetic media and not as 
> > so-called cognitive-artifacts.”
> 
> Great stuff - can we have the full reference to this research Nancy?
> 
> For a few years I've been observing new media / experimental music 
> work 
> which explores exactly this function of digital media - their 
> ability 
> to transduce signal / information between sensory modes. These 
> works 
> are examples of "synaesthetic media" in the sense that they 
> demonstrate 
> a kind of machine synaesthesia and evoke a human sensory fusion / 
> crossover. What interests me is that such work is evoking human 
> synaesthesia through a non-human process - via the particular 
> audio/visual crossovers offered by digital/analog media 
> technologies, 
> rather than the crossovers generated in our neural structures. It's 
> interesting also that this evocation is powerful in spite of what 
> might 
> be considered the "artefacts" of transduction - for example the 
> 50Hz 
> hum that results from turning an analog video signal into audio. In 
> fact it's the properties of the signal *per se* which the works 
> direct 
> us to...
> 
> Two of my favourite examples... both happen to be Australian (in 
> memoriam OzCo New Media Arts)
> 
> Robin Fox, Backscatter (DVD) - Synaesthesia Records, 2004. (see for 
> eg 
> http://www.synrecords.com/synaesthesia/featured/ - I can't find any 
> video online!) This work is truly astounding: live generated 
> digital 
> waveforms plugged into an oscilloscope in "polar" mode... Fox 
> designs 
> sounds and gestures for visual as well as sonic results - staggering.
> 
> Andrew Gadow, INVERSION (2001). Again not online as far as I know. 
> Gadow generates video live with an old Fairlight CVI (digital video 
> "synthesiser") and simply routes the video signal out as audio. 
> Abstract, flickering, noisy, degraded video, sound similar, end 
> result 
> is hardcore sensory fusion.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mitchell
> http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell
> 
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