My Frame Seductions piece recently won an interactive art honour award at the FILE Prix Lux. From the FILE website:

In 2010, FILE launches FILE PRIX LUX, an international prize for professionals in the area of electronic-digital languages. This is an unprecedented initiative in Latin America that values the art of the XXI century viable for the first time by Santander through the Lei Rouanet de incentivo à Cultura.

This initiative was conceived to complement FILE’s actions in the area of electronic and digital languages, with the intent of rewarding, motivating and stimulating the emergence of new talents. FILE intends with FILE PRIX LUX, besides the exhibition and presentation of works, to add value to such manifestations, conferring to the awarded artists a national and international impact.

The 2010 prize received 1,235 registrations from 44 countries among which 90 works were nominated. Of those nominated, 21 works were selected, 7 in each category (Interactive Art, Electronic Sonority and Digital Language). The top two works were given 1st and 2nd prizes respectively. The remainding five works (such as mine) were given honourable mentions. The Awards ceremony took place on July 26th, 2010, at Teatro do SESI – São Paulo, in conjunction with the opening of the FILE exhibition.

Due to bad health, I was unfortunately unable to attend the opening exhibition. However in my place I sent my friend and collaborator Andre Mintz to set up the installation. Andre worked on the project during the Interactivos workshop in Lima, Peru, where the work was conceived. Andre can be seen in the picture above taking a photo of the installation with what looks to be his phone camera.

A review of some of the projects from the FILE Prix Lux exhibition, including mine,  has been written up at We-Make-Money-Not-Art.

On the 28th of May I attended the opening of the Real-Fake exhibition at the Art University of Linz (Kunstuniversität Linz). I developed the sound design to my friend Letitia Lehner’s installation All Our Lives Are Symbols which was part of the exhibition. The piece is an ambitious attempt to represent the symbolic in both the visual and audio realms. My contribution was to compose sound for 4 different abstract graphic symbols, which each sound somehow signifying the visual in some way. The installation setup consisted of four turntables playing back 7″ vinyl records of each of the 4 sound pieces I had designed. Above each turntable sat a record case with a printed insert depicting the symbol that was used as inspiration for the sound. The end result was meant to be an abstract tension between the visual and auditory, a kind of symbolic synthaesthesia. Here’s my rough translation of the german from the website:

A graphical and auditory interpretation of the fictitious symbolic language »SYNCHISIA SYMBOLS« – an international art project by the scottish artist Ryan Hays. Information is being constantly mediated in syntactic, semantic and pragmatic ways. »ALL OUR LIVES ARE SYMBOLS« is a purely aesthetic and formalistic formulation, which the concept of language highlights ad absurdum.

Obviously difficult to imagine this without the audio and symbols, however here’s one rendering of the symbols which I used as inspiration:

For the first symbol, an inverted “V”, I created a periodic ramping, sound, as of someone breathing or a wave breaking and receding on a shore.

For the second, the pyramid, I created a solid foundation to the piece in the form of a low frequency bass sequence effected by some phase distortion to give an eerie touch. To me, the pyramid reflected strength, power and stability.

For the third, the triangle-circle, I created a rhythmic, clicking, looping sound that was both circular (cyclic) and triangular (ramping up and down in amplitude).

For the final symbol, the circle, I used an effected recording of my finger moving in circles around the rim of a half filled wine glass, creating at atmospheric resonant ringing sound.

I’m on page 3 of the interactive art section. This category includes the following types of works:

interactive art includes all research and experiments in the scope of art that use interactive media and have in mind the intersection among art, science and technology, as well as the possible crossings with other disciplines, such as: installations, performances, internet projects, virtual reality, augmented reality, multitouch tables, digital objects, outdoor projections, projects for mobile phone, electronic graffiti, VRML, etc.

A computer controlled spotlight projects a cone of light when a person enters the space. It pulses and flickers based on a person’s distance to the light, emitting a crackling, watery noises as the light changes. The closer to the centre of the light, the more chaotic the sounds become. It is an experiment in making light tangible, through sound.

Here’s a video of the installation in action:

I edited some video of the two pieces, and here they are:

The event was located in the majestic Kanonhallen, an old munitions factory from WWII that has since been converted into a very funky space with a classic Scandinavian design and finish. A mix of people from different backgrounds attended resulting in an intimate but enriching experience, not to mention fun as well.

Hopefully organiser Alexander Eichhorn will continue to produce more events in this vein in the future.

Highlights were the keynote talk from Mark Coniglio from Troika Ranch and the sound performance by Lars Graugaard (who also has some tracks on myspace) who transformed the hall into an post-human poly-rhythmic sound-scape.

It was something of a dancy disco-electro-techno set with loads of squealing synthesisers and the occasional vocal. I don’t get to do this sort of thing very often these days but I find it great for stress relief and general manic fun. Incidentally I’m also pretty good at it. Thanks to Matej for loaning his Truth monitors and Radek for lending the Nord Lead synth…without it I would have been defenseless! Here’s the flyer:

On the 10th and 11th of April I will be teaching a workshop on openFrameworks (OF) at CIANT together with Arturo Castro, one of the lead developers of OF.

The workshop is free, so if you are in the area please feel free to register.

The details of the event are here.

I wrote an article on liminal immersion in the 16th issue of on-line art and technology journal Vague Terrain.

Guest edited by Joshua Noble the theme is Architecture/Action. It also features articles by or interview with Golan Levin, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Joshua Noble, Marilena Skavara, and Mark Shepard.

It’s a summary of my thoughts on the threshold of immersion in interaction installations. Check it out here.

I’ve been pretty slow as usual to document my projects from last year, but here’s a video of the Frame Seductions project with the technical back-end improved and using some new technology. It’s not terribly glamorous as it was shot in my apartment in Toulouse, but it should give you a feeling for the smoothness and intuitive feel of the interaction. Above is a picture from the orginal installation that was exhibited in Lima, Peru. Unfortunately the video we recorded somehow got corrupted – I’m not sure if this was due to the x-ray machines at the airports I passed through or just the scorching heat in the south of France last summer…but basically I was only able to extract a few decent frames from the HDV tapes I had from the event.

Here is the video of the updated installation: