king talk

I think you’ll know the crazy japanese guy who stimulated his face with electronics. It’s Daito Manabe, a very experimental guy who likes to play around with himself, but he and his partners (Alvaro Cassinelli and Yusaku Kuribara) have more stuff to show…

»scoreLight« is a prototype musical instrument capable of generating sound in real time from the lines of doodles as well as from the contours of three-dimensional objects nearby (hands, dancer’s silhouette, architectural details, etc). There is no camera nor projector: a laser spot explores the shape as a pick-up head would search for sound over the surface of a vinyl record – with the significant difference that the groove is generated by the contours of the drawing itself. The light beam follows these countours in the very same way a blind person uses a white cane to stick to a guidance route on the street. Details of this tracking technique can be found here.

Sound is produced and modulated according to the curvature of the lines being followed, their angle with respect to the vertical as well as their color and contrast. This means that  »scoreLight« implements gesture, shape and color-to-sound artificial synesthesia; abrupt changes in the direction of the lines produce trigger discrete sounds (percussion, glitches), thus creating a rhythmic base (the length of a closed path determines the overall tempo).

via Ishikawa-Komuro Lab

Golan Levin, an artist and engineer, uses modern tools – robotics, new software, cognitive research – to make artworks that surprise and delight. Watch as sounds become shapes, bodies create paintings, and a curious eye looks back at the curious viewer. Golan worked as an academic at MIT and a researcher specializing in computer technology and software engineering, Golan Levin now spends most of his time working as a performance artist. Rest assured his education hasn’t gone to waste, however, as Levin blends high tech and customized software programs to create his own extraordinary audio and visual compositions. The results are inordinately experimental sonic and visual extravaganzas from the furthest left of the field.

Many of his pieces force audience participation, such as Dialtones: A Telesymphony, a concert from 2001 entirely composed of the choreographed ringtones of his audience. Regularly exhibiting pieces in galleries around the world, and also working as an Assistant Professor of Electronic Time-Based Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Levin is unapologetically pushing boundaries to define a brave new world of what is possible. His latest piece, Double-Taker (Snout), is installed at the Pittsburg Museum of Art.