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Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice 

(2002) 

by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman is an interactive audiovisual installation whose central theme is the magical relationship of speech to the ethereal medium which conveys it.

The Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice is an interactive audiovisual installation, or, alternatively, an augmented-reality speech-visualization system. Its central theme is the magical relationship of speech to the ethereal medium which conveys it. Participants in Hidden Worlds are able to 'see' each others' voices, which are made visible in the form of animated graphic figurations that appear to emerge from the participants' mouths while they speak. In the installation, visitors wear special see-through data glasses, which register and superimpose 3D graphics into the real world. When one of the users speaks or sings, colorful abstract forms appear to emerge from his or her mouth. The graphics representing these utterances assume a wide variety of shapes and behaviors that are tightly coupled to the unique qualities of the vocalist's volume, pitch and timbre.

 

Hidden Worlds permits up to six visitors to participate in the consensual hallucination, enabling a wide range of engaging audiovisual and conversational play. For those who are not equipped with the data-glasses, a projection at the center of the installation makes visible the 'shadows' of the virtual spoken forms. Hidden Worlds was developed in the Summer of 2002, and was installed in a two-year exhibition at the Ars Electronica Museum of the Future in Linz, Austria.

 

Source: Golan Levin

 

 

Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice, people, software, Humor, kids, speech, Interactive, Installation

Reading

Optical Poetry (2004) by Dr. William Moritz is the long-awaited, definitive biography of Oskar Fischinger. The result of over 30 years of research on this visionary abstract filmmaker and painter. In addition to Moritz's comprehensive biography, it includes numerous photographs in colour and black and white (many never before published), statements by Oskar Fischinger about his films, a newly created extensive filmography, and a selected bibliography. (John Libbey Publishing)

See this Sound (2009) by Liz Kotz (Author), Cosima Rainer (Editor), Stella Rollig (Editor), Dieter Daniels (Editor), Manuela Ammer (Editor) compiles a huge number of artists, filmmakers, composers and performers, reaching back into the early twentieth century and into the present to survey overlaps between not only sound and art, sound and film, and the metaphor of cinema as rhythm or symphony. Proceeding chronologically, the book takes the early cinematic eye music of Hans Richter as a starting point, noting parallel works by Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fischinger; moving into the postwar period, the art/cinema/ music experiments of Peter Kubelka, Valie Export and Michael Snow are discussed, establishing precedents to similar work by Rodney Graham, Carsten Nicolai, Jeremy Deller and many others. (Artbook)

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SEE ALSO

Grid Index (2009) by Carsten Nicolai is the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems. Based upon years of research, artist and musician Carsten Nicolai has discovered and unlocked the visual code for visual systems into a systematic equation of grids and patterns. The accompanying CD contains all of the grids and patterns featured in the publication from the simplest grids made up entirely of squares to the most complex irregular ones with infinitely unpredictable patterns of growth, as editable vector graphic data files. (Gestalten)

Lamp Shade (2007) by David Muth visually explores rhythmic patterns and their underlying harmonic shifts through abstract minimalism. Specially written software generated the imagery. Music by Alvin Lucier. (David Muth)

Bob Sabiston (*1967) is an American film art director, computer programmer, and creator of the Rotoshop software program for computer animation. (Wikipedia)

Aphex Swarm (2008) is a Visual Muisc clip by Reza Ali. The base video material was a flocking simulation in Maya. The audio track is Girl/ Boy Song (18£ Snare Rush Remix) by Aphex Twin. (Reza Ali)

Sitting Room (2008) is 45-minute performance for one performer, two loudspeakers, two microphones, on-body-projection and delicate sound balancing by Depart and Richard Eigner. Richard Eigner and Gregor Ladenhauf were responsible for the acoustic implementation of this concept that was first realised in 1969 by American composer Alvin Lucier. Together with Leonhard Lass, who is responsible for the visual translation of the piece, performer Gregor Ladenhauf adds to the piece as voice and screen at the same time. A speaker transforming into a projection screen of his own voice, gradually disappearing like this voice during the course of the composition. (Depart)