Sound and Vision
Ah, Ah
Ah, Ah
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Don’t you wonder sometimes
‘Bout sound and vision
David Bowie 1977
Morning starts with NPR and coffee. I still tune in on a vintage 1977 Morantz 2238 stereo receiver. I can’t help it. Call me a sucker for nostalgia, but I like the physicality of it. Turning the dial. Tuning it in. Hearing the crackle of a transmitting signal. As long as they send out signal, that’s how I’ll be listening.
CRACKLE, CRACKLE, CRACKLE ZWIIIrp…
…on May 15, 2028 in honor of the celebration of Brian Eno’s 80th Birthday, MIT in collaboration with Eno will release Sound and Vision or SAV. SAV is a generative music and video application for smart mobile communication devices and pads. A hybrid of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers’ Bloom and Trope apps released in 2001 and 2015 respectively combined with Kimiko Ryokai, Stefan Marti and Professor Hiroshi Ishii’s I/O brush released in 2004. Bloom and Trope were both designed as generative music applications. Generative Music was a term coined by Eno to describe any music that is ever-different & changing, created by a system. Bloom and Trope incorporated generative visual elements as well. The I/O Brush was a drawing tool used to explore color texture and movements from everyday materials by picking up and drawing with them.
SAV initiates from a brush-like tool, much like I/O brush, but translates the visual through a simple system into generative music. Also, it acts as a microphone and then translates the audio through a similar simple system into generative video. The two channels are combined and shared as a live stream across the SAV social media platform, SAV Live or SALVE. Each transmission is recorded and archived in the SALVE database. The stream equals a performance space or studio and the database, a gallery or museum…
Say What?! Oh serendipity, in the age of big data and algorithms seemingly invading our consciousness and directing our every move, you still hold sway. It just so happens I’ve been invited to teach a summer course for high school art students at the Center for Art and Technology (CART) on aesthetic criteria in the digital age. I’ve been considering how, with the rise of web-based art and the demise of the traditional gallery system, this new post-contemporary aesthetic has been created. Where, outside the museum, nothing physically tangible exists as art anymore. On a positive note, the ways we have been interacting in a post-human world have nearly eradicated notions of gender and race. On the other hand, it has rendered painting, finally, truly dead. Leave it to Brian Eno to turn it on its’ head. A salve on the wound inflicted by cyberart’s transgression of the artists’ hand. The real beauty is in the subtle line this technology walks. The piece is initiated by the artists’ hand by wielding the brush/microphone and observing the physical audible and visual world around them. And then, by flipping the artists’ observations through translation by systems from audio to video and vice versa it maintains the post-human qualities of each individual piece. Sure, the outcomes are not tangible, but at least the brush has returned. An old painter at heart, I’ll take what I can get.
…a functionality that is being considered is the option of the viewer to turn on “artist mode” and essentially re-mix what is being created by the artist and transmit this re-worked piece to the archive. The idea comes from Bloom and Trope. They each had listen and create modes.
Wow. I remember having Bloom on my I-phone. I could be a passive viewer/listener or active creator. What if users of SAV could send the live streams back and forth? The viewer becomes the artist’s critic and collaborator and after many turns the artist themselves. The viewer and artist are interchangeable. I wonder if they thought of that? I may be taking it a step too far.
…the brush-like tool has been fully tested but the SALVE stream and database are still in beta testing. Brian Eno and MIT are searching for interested participants. Applications are being accepted from established artists who quote, “are old enough to have wielded a paint brush” and accredited educational institutions that deal with aesthetics in the digital age…
I’d love to get my hands on this, literally and figuratively. It would be perfect for the upcoming class at CART. I like to create an environment of collaborative mentorship with my students. My projects are inclusive of individual input and conceptually tie each individual project, including my own, into a comprehensive final work. With SAV, there seems to be no limit to the length or depth of each creation. Potentially, we can pass the brush and collaborate in real time. Perhaps, each of us should have a turn first, just making our own piece and then collaborate on a classroom piece. The social media platform aspect of SALVE creates the possibility for sharing with other classrooms around the world. We could establish individual accounts for each student and myself and then a classroom account for collaborations. If the SAV designers add the proposed “artist” mode, students in classrooms everywhere could collaborate with each other. It would be a thrill if my students were able to give feedback as part of the beta testing. It’s time for a call to my contacts at CART so we can get an application submitted as soon as possible.
…in other news, an executive order to ban A.I. marriage has been…
Same news, different decade.
…CRACKLE, CRACKLE, CRACKLE ZWIIIrp…
…Drifting into my solitude, over my head. Don’t you wonder sometimes
‘Bout sound and vision.