[-empyre-] final questions for Patrick and Jason: the visual and indexing networked information

[naxsmash]

no, i think that the sound space/ sonification field is far from  
narrow-- it's not obscured by the visual-- sound cuts 'below'  
vision... thanks for sharing the links here for turbulence's sound  
projects.
I had a strange and powerful 'turning away 'from the visual experience  
in working with carbon sink data on the tallgrass prairie in 2002--the  
most rich and interesting expression of the datafields was through  
sound using an extra layer of
meaning/ stealing-- from John Cage-- This was slipstreamkonza which I  
made with the wonderful and amusing help of Henry Warwick (mister H W  
of -empyre- postings). For my part I feel the most interesting  issues  
in sonficiation have
to do with poetics and syntax (as usual in my world)!Rather than  
'visualize' the data I just put together a slide show of the  
microclimate instrumentation on the prairie. To contextualize the  
sound.  In no way was the sonification intended to
directly represent the carbon data; rather Henry and I worked with  
three layers of sound-meaning -- a recasting of Cage's HPSCHD, local  
ambient sound recorded as the microclimate 'autochamber' machine  
worked in the field, and aleatory noise
patterns coming out of Henry's crunching of the excell spread sheets  
and assigning arbitrary audio values to numerical patterns.  Published  
for COSIGN, SCALE (USCD) and YLEM in 2004.


http://www.christinamcphee.net/slipkonza/autochamber.html


-cm
On Oct 25, 2009, at 6:39 PM, Helen Thorington wrote:

> Hi Anna:
>
> Re your question to Jason: has the dominance of visualisation of  
> networks obscured more interesting potential sonifications?  I  
> remember the Ars-Electronica jury in 2007(?)  writing about the  
> overwhelming number of visualization projects they had been forced  
> to review. Their concluding words were: there must be something else  
> out there!  I  agree:  and there is. But
> visualizations continue to appear in overwhelming numbers; thanks to  
> information aesthetics, new ones arrive in my email every day, .
>
> On the.  other  side, however, musicians and composers have been  
> slow to pick up on sonification.   Scientific researchers have  
> looked on it as s a valuable tool , allowing them to study complex  
> sets of scientific data and perceive variations and trends   
> invisible by other techniques,  but its use has been pretty much  
> limited to  disciplines like chemical analysis, economic analysis,  
> seismology, medicine. (see: sonification in wikipedia)  Until  
> recently.
>
> So for musicians and composers, sonification is pretty much of an  
> emerging interest.
>
> That said,  turbulence's   networked_music_review  contains a number  
> of truly fascinating works  that introduce new and/or extra-audible  
> sounds, thus broadening the potential source material for sound and  
> musical work.  Miya Masaoka's Pieces for Plants (2002) is an  
> interactive sound installation for laptop, synthesizer, and the  
> American semi-tropical climbing Philodendron. Versions of the piece  
> have been presented in a musical setting in which the plant  
> participates as a member and soloist within an instrumental  
> ensemble. In both installation and performance, the plant’s real- 
> time responses to its physical environment are translated to sound.   
> “The Cloud Harp” installation by Nicolas Reeves sonifies  
> astronomical phenomena. It uses an infra-red laser beam and a  
> telescope that share the same optics to convert the height, density  
> and structure of clouds into sounds and musical sequences in real- 
> time.  Daniel Joliffe and Jocelyn Roberts  developed an installation  
> that produces music in real time by following the azimuth, elevation  
> and signal strength of the twenty-seven Global Positioning System  
> (GPS) satellites developed by the US military.
>
> I could go on... Have visualizations obscured this work?  A  
> different  question: Has the hegemony of vision been broken?
>
> -- Helen 
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 25, 2009, at 5:25 PM, Anna Munster wrote:
>
>> I'm about to bring our last lot of guests on board for October but  
>> before I do, I'd like to ask Patrick and Jason about the use of  
>> visualisation and its relation to information overload and writing/ 
>> reading.
>>
>> Patrick you touch on the need to index using some kind of visual  
>> system....
>> Jason, you use the example of Aaron Koblin's work, which has also  
>> delved into the visualisation realm (ie The Sheep Market) and  
>> which, for different reasons uses visual display to make its point.
>> In my article I am wary of what visualisation gives form to ie  
>> patterns of behaviour in a networked economy.
>>
>> We are all aware of the  mot obvious forms of visual indexing of  
>> networked information eg tag clouds etc - to what extent do these  
>> reduce or enhance flows? And to what extent are they shaping a  
>> homogenising behaviour in networks (this has been referred to in  
>> Yvonne's posts as well)?
>>
>> Jason, I wonder if the dominance of visualisation of networks  
>> abscures more interesting potential sonifications?
>>
>> Following from this, what role might artists take up (speaking of  
>> artists broadly here as online art/designers) in breaking up this  
>> homogeneity? Or put more concretely - which artists/designers/ 
>> visual examples are doing this now?
>>
>> cheers
>> Anna
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> A/Prof. Anna Munster
>> Director of Postgraduate Research (Acting)
>> Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics
>> School of Art History and Art Education
>> College of Fine Arts
>> UNSW
>> P.O. Box 259
>> Paddington
>> NSW 2021
>> 612 9385 0741 (tel)
>> 612 9385 0615(fax)
>> a.munster at unsw.edu.au
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre