Tactile Sound Objects

I’m currently woking on tactile sculptures, some of which will be part of the sound object series (with analog synths and speakers inside)

Currently I am working on a series of implementations of tactile and sonic objects programmed to exhibit various behaviors (some unexpected and some therapeutic) and meant to be used in group workshops, choreographed performances, as well as individually as meditative props. These offshoots are part of the work I began during my graduate studies at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.

Exploring the use of therapeutic, tactile and sonic, reflexive props in group settings for various group work.

This is a video of me moving one of the sound objects. The accelerometer/gyroscope sensor is picking up the tilt, sending the data through serial to Max/MSP, where various sonic behaviors are set off. Some variation happens due to the object being programmed to have options as to how to respond and with which sounds, but for the most part the semi-autonomous object can be collaborated with.

These experimentation are for an ongoing body of work - critical sound objects - tactile sonic objects that are programmable and are to be used for groups of people to create sounds together and explore, playing with sound relationship and reflecting on collaboration. The objects’ sonic behaviors change over time, they can affect one another, and cannot be fully controlled. The result is a jam session that required participants to pay attention and adjust as they improvise together.

The project asks: can people using such objects be encouraged to reflect on their social agreements and relationships to nonhuman elements around us?

Garbage Jam with Tiri Kananuruk

Tiri Kananuruk and I perform Garbage symphony at Essex Flowers in New York city for the closing of my solo show, Important Structures Upheld. Nov 6, 2022.

Tiri and I talked about our related project about waste and essential work at Trash Club, which is a group started by Rashida Kamal, Morgan Mueller, and Emily Lin from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Sound instruments for meditation and play

This is an accelerometer to synth modulator im a P5js editor (using Tone.js) in a browser on an android phone. It can be placed inside an enclosure to create an sonified kinetic sculpture.

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I am working on an interactive sonic playground that allows seeing and non-seeing individuals to create - and optionally to collaborate with others on creating - sonic compositions in real time by setting kinetic sculptures into motion either by touching or wearing the sonic objects on their bodies.

Last year I learned how to take sensor data from accelerometers and and other motion sensors and feed it into MaxMSP to create real-time generative sound compositions that incorporate sensor data into their algorithm and allow it to impact how the instrument will sound in the future. These ever-changing and impressionable compositions live inside the objects on a raspberry pi and connect to speakers/headphones via accelerators. Snippets of surrounding space is sometimes captured and fed into the algorithm also, making the space sound part of the permanent DNA of the objects and surfacing again in future compositions. In this way, the sonic objects aren't just instruments but are entities that change over time along with us and affected by us.

So far I have simple prototypes that work and I now have a second year at ITP to create a whole collection of these "instruments", each one with it's own "character" - it's own behaviors and sonic qualities. I intend to use a variety of materials and textures that are interesting to touch and that are durable - plush, inflatable, conducive sting fibers, resin, resin foam, 3d-printed with PLA, and even cement.

The collective soundscapes that result from people engaging with the objects and sometimes with each other are portraits of those interactions and spaces and a testament to collaboration, creativity, and play that are so important for human development and self reflection. These qualities separate us from other animals. This sort of tactile, sonic, mindful making in a space that is highly abstracted from familiarity and removed from the bustle of everyday life is also intended to be a place of meditation that the modern human so desperately needs.

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The ideas behind it

Sound is, in my opinion, one of the richest materials to use as feedback because it's it abstract yet accessible to most people. We are naturally inclined to listen to music, for example. We perceive the nuances in the vast variety of sound available to us, which can create a myriad of moods. There is emotion in sound that is often hard to convey using sculpture. Sculpture on the other hand is something that can one can be next to - it's visual and tangible. There is a permanence to it that I find valuable in staying focused on an experience. One can be in the presence of an object and it can be meditative to hold it and focus on it.  Sounds can complement this meditative experience. Sounds are fleeting but instruments remain. The sound, in a way, is captured by the object.

To give the experience dimension and give the objects agency I add code that makes the "instruments'" behavior impossible to predict with certainty yet also intuitive. Certain variables will be easily discoverable while others will change over time so that people who engage with the system of instruments cannot fully impose their will on this system.

In a way these dialogic interactions are simulating what many of us would like to see more of in the world - more cooperation with nature is just one example. Another example is literally creating better relationships between object and people (the opposite of Alexa :) ) I found out from Marina that people have been interested in this already- Actor Network Theory. I'm glad there is a language for what I'm trying to do and the are already many conversations about it. Turns out my mom knows about this too! I told her about giving agency to objects and she said "yes I've read about this. It's become popular recently!" So that's fun. She finally understands now why I'm doing these things. Putting in in context of the movement helps people understand the idea behind this project so that's going to help with thesis as I plan to continue exploring various tangible and sonic interactions with an emphasis on subverting traditional human to object (which can also stand for human to nature, human to other species, human to other human even) relationships.

Another way to look at it is if I'm going to build a set of instruments that are meant to be meditative objects, I don't want them to be servile, predictable, and boring. I would like then to charge and surprise me every time I use them. I'd like to create a sense of wonder that comes with using an instrument for the first time out discovering something new. I think it will be stimulating and encourage creative thinking and perhaps even self refection after certain types of interactions. What does it mean to you and how do you feel when a series of instruments charge how they play in response to a certain way that you activate them?

These instruments allow you - if you listen and pay attention to how they choose to work - to create ever-changing, sonic experiments.

Thanks for Aaron Montoya-Moraga and Dominic Barrett for helping troubleshoot some things.

Nina Simone Granular Synthesis

in 2018 I made a haunting granular synthesis of Nina Simone's already quite haunting "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair." I used Max MSP to do this.

For the visual/cover art I created a repetitive pattern and superimposed it of Charles “Teenie” Harris' Double exposure of Nina Simone on piano, and guitar player, performing on stage of Hilton Hotel ballroom (December 1968 - January 1969).

#maxmsp #ninasimone

Work by Tiri Kananuruk and I for Kleio Collective

Live-streamed performance. 30 minutes.

6/18/20.

“Objects which functionally approximated actual cooking utensils were used: nails, hammers, an arrow, ... the cook's apron was a ripped mini skirt with which I covered my hair. As I state in the performance, 'traditionally you need an apron, but it doesn't matter where you put it.'“ - Carolee Schneemann on Americana I Ching Apple Pie

“…Alienation and emancipation are embedded in quotidian rhythms” - Michel Alhadeff-Jones on Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis..

“Garbage is the ultimate mixed media” - Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Tiri Kananuruk and Katya Rozanova have spent their time during lockdown exploring what domesticity means to female sound artists. Previously unoccupied with matters of domesticity and its patriarchal connotations, they have found themselves in constant contact with these domestic rituals and efforts.

They have spent the past few months accumulating discarded packaging and transformed these into ‘garbage instruments’, which they will combine with curious and long-forgotten kitchen artefacts, located in the back of recently rediscovered cupboards. Garlic crushers will meet beer cans, cheese grinders encounter cereal boxes, and scouring pads confront pasta packets during this live audiovisual performance. Through the combining of these instruments, Tiri and Katya created a saucepan symphony which invites the audience to both reimagine a new, playful domesticity, and acknowledge our continual dependency on the essential workers who tirelessly make, pack and provide the very objects from which this piece is made. In exploring our connection to these workers, the artists embody an awareness of the social-fabric that sustains us, and invite the audience to do the same.

This project engages critically with how labor is valued and organized during the pandemic through embodying an alternative way to relating to domestic rituals, other social actors such as delivery workers, and our own identity as women performing domestic labor. The work aligns with the ongoing theme in my work of observing one’s role in society and finding emancipatory collective and playful actions that range from refusal to speculation.

Work was included in the digital exhibition 'FEATHER DUSTING / FUTURE LUSTING' by Kleió. To visit or return to the exhibition, click on the link: kleiocollective.co.uk

Exit! Alternative Labor Paradigm Speaker Series for students

I organized a speaker series for art and design students in my CUNY classes. In my classes I emphasize the ways in which artists, designers, and tech workers can collaborate outside of traditional hierarchical systems.

Design for Cooperation or: How We Learned to Love The Multitude

Design for Cooperation or: How We Learned to Love The Multitude is a course I conceived of and pitched to Queens College and invited collaborators Hadass Wade (an organized from Bed-Stuy Strong Mutual Aid) and Kathy Wu (a fellow professor who teaches to co-write and co-teach with my at Queens College in Spring 2022.

We hope that this course will set into motion a life-long practice of observation and experimentation in the field of political collaboration as a resistance to the way artists and designers are often instrumentalized for for the advancement of current extractive systems.

Grateful for my collaborators, the students who took the course, and to Queens College for welcoming and supporting this experimental class.

Movable Sculpture with Light and Clay

Sound modulating slit scan location via processing

Bedford-Nostrand Station

Everyone is doing slit-scan things these days and I decided to apply the effect on something that looks like a slit-scan already. Here is an homage to my favorite horizontals and colors at Bedford Nostrand. The station is often empty and the practically uninterrupted horizontals make for a soothing wait. They also mimic the blur of the train. The saturated industrial yellows next to tempered forest greens remind me of rain boots and camping gear.

Using processing to modulate where the digital slit-scan is sampled in a static image that I turned into a video. So far, I am simulating sound input with the mouse. The next steps is to use actual sound input to modulate the location.  Inspired by recent work of @lkkchung, @loquepasa, @sofialuisa_ , and Spike Jonze. A bit of coding guidance from Koji Kanao (@array_ideas). I’m sort of cheating because I’m using the mouse to approximate the sonic changes. The next step is to actually use sonic input to trigger the visual changes. I’ll try to get to it this summer.

Bedford-Nostrand Station

York Station

Bergen Station

First sound to slit scan experiment - airplane

code:

 

/**
 * Transform: Slit-Scan
 * from Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture
 * by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, and LUST
 * Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
 * ISBN 9781568989372
 * 
 * This code was written for Processing 1.2+
 * Get Processing at http://www.processing.org/download
 */

import processing.video.*;
int cols;
int rows;
PImage backgroundimage;

Movie myVideo;
int video_width     = 210;
int video_height    = 280;

int window_width    = 1000;
int window_height   = video_height;
int draw_position_x = 0; 
boolean newFrame  = false;

void setup() {
  myVideo = new Movie(this, "small_210_280.mp4");
  size(1000, 280);
  background(#ffffff);
  myVideo.loop();
  frameRate(260);
  
  backgroundimage = loadImage("bckg3.jpg");
  cols = 160;
  rows = 100;
  if( backgroundimage.width%width > 0)
  if( backgroundimage.height%height > 0)

 
  for (int y=0; y<rows; y++){
    for (int x=0; x<cols; x++){
      image(backgroundimage,x*backgroundimage.width,y*backgroundimage.height);
    }
  }
  
}

void movieEvent(Movie myMovie) {
  myMovie.read();
  newFrame = true;
}

void draw() {
  
  
 
  
  int r = floor(random(250));

int video_slice_x   = (1+(mouseX));
  if (newFrame) {
    loadPixels();
    for (int y=0; y<window_height; y++){
      int setPixelIndex = y*window_width + draw_position_x;
      int getPixelIndex = y*video_width  + video_slice_x;
      pixels[setPixelIndex] = myVideo.pixels[getPixelIndex];
    }
    updatePixels();
    draw_position_x++;
    if (draw_position_x >= window_width) {
      exit();
    }
    newFrame = false;
  }
  
}

Art and Labor

I was honored to lead a discussion at Tech For Social Good Day at NYU’s ITP in January of 2020.

Inquire within for the full presentation.

Inquire within for the full presentation.

Chair in contrapposto

I’m interested in awkwardness of form and attempts at balance in human and nonhuman bodies. This piece explores the body of a chair that mimics the exaggerated stance of the human in contrapposto, possibly mocking the human’s leisurely stance and at the same time perhaps genuinely demonstrating its desire to appear human - or at least as important as a human (how important is that?) - and demand recognition of its chairness without inviting us to sit. There is, after all, no seat. The chair might be playfully inviting us to pay attention to the nonhuman actors around us.