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)

 

SEE ALSO

Brian O'Reilly is the creator of various works for moving images, electronic/noise music, mixed media collage, installation, and is a contrabassist, focusing on the integration of electronic treatments and extended playing techniques. (Brian O'Reilly on Vimeo)

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)

Karl Kliem (*1969) studied at the well-known Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Art and Design) in Offenbach. He developed real-time audio and visual systems and has designed the most diverse projects in the fields of multi-media, web design, and TV design, as well as music and audio production for films and interactive installations. Karl Kliem is a founding member of Involving-Systems (1994) and MESO (1997). (Dienststelle)

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)

META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (2007) by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history, and network-infused language art. META/DATA is a playful, improvisatory, multitrack digital sampling of Amerika's writing from 1993 to 2005 that tells the early history of a net art world gone wild while simultaneously constructing a parallel poetics of net art that complements Amerika's own artistic practice. (The MIT Press)