An improvisation duo, an attempt of aligning, orienting, coupling systems with one another.
In autumn 2014, Hanns Holger Rutz and David Pirrò founded the algorithmic improvisaiton duo Anemone Actiniaria. They have played various concerts, and were conducting an artistic research project at ZKM Karlsruhe in 2015.
During the project period of the Algorithms that Matter research project, Anemone Actiniaria is part of its method and its objects of practices and observation.
A forerunner project on the iterative and durational nature of algorithms, their resistance to coming to completion.
june.2016 - january.2017
exhibition esc media art lab, Graz
catalogue
Algorithms that Matter (ALMAT) is an artistic research project within the framework of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) – PEEK AR 403-GBL – and funded by the Austrian National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development (FTE) and by the State of Styria. It is hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
Workshop in the special programme of impuls academy, co-tutored with Agostino Di Scipio
Graz, 10.02.2017 - 22.02.2017
Exhibition project on becoming swarm, becoming a holobiont (Nayarí Castillo, Gertrude Grossegger, Hanns Holger Rutz). Micro-symposium and catalogue.
23.08.2017 - 19.09.2017
Akademie Graz, Neutorgasse 42, Graz
The first reseearch iteration was conducted with composer, installation artist and computer music pioneer Ron Kuivila.
Experimenting with ultra-sound; creating feedback configurations with ultra-sound; visiting Riga; talking about Hayles' Unthought; understanding the Patterns library by translating it to a different framework.
The second iteration was conducted with artist and composer Erin Gee.
BioSynth: coupling physiological signals to sound synthesis; affective computing and physiological effect of emotions;
A "workshop-in-exposition" implemented in collaboration with BEK Bergen Center for Electronic Arts and a group of artists who responded to our call for participation.
08.06.2018 - 15.06.2018
Lydgalleriet, Bergen, NO
A modular installation series investigating the relationship between the algorithmic and the corporeal.
The third iteration was conducted with sound artist and music-technology researcher Jonathan Reus.
Incorporating story telling into live coding perfromances; speech recognition experiments: building a smart classifier / feature detector; SC SynthLibrary class: collects and catalogues synths created during live performances.
Embedded in the ZKM festival inSonic, we issued a special call for presentations (papers and performances) around the question of spatialities of the algorithmic.
07-08 Dec .2018
ZKM, Karlsruhe, DE
Workshop in the special programme of impuls academy, co-tutored with Robin Minard.
11.02.2019 - 21.02.2019
MUWA, Friedrichgasse 41, 8010 Graz
The fourth iteration was conducted with researcher and composer of instrumental and electronic music Luc Döbereiner.
Contingency and synchronisation; Kuramoto: a model for synchronisation (web installation); Hopf oscillator: sound installation; WRECK: writing a small DSP language; iteration vs recursivity;
An artistic research seminar in collaboration with the ‘Music, Thought and Technology’ group of Jonathan Impett at Orpheus Institute Ghent.
21-22 March .2019
ORPHEUS Institute, Ghent, BE
A collaboration with the European Master Module in Art, Science, Technology (MAST), coordinated in Austria by the Institute of Spatial Design of the TU Graz.
08-12 April .2019 - Workshop
May / June 2020 - Exhibition
ESC medien kunst labor, Graz
The fifth and likely final iteration centres around the practices of the ALMAT core team and the works created for the 2020 exhibition Algorithmic Segments. From beginning of 2020, the team is joined by guest artist Ji Youn Kang.
A project on digitality and urban future, in the framework of Graz Kulturjahr 2020. Almat contributes several of the digital and sound art works exhibited in various art spaces in the city of Graz, and connected through a digital sound walk.
Multiple openings and exhibitions, from July to October 2020
City of Graz
Catalogue
xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects them all.
xCoAx has been an occasion for international audiences to meet and exchange ideas, in search for interdisciplinary synergies among computer scientists, artists, media practitioners, and theoreticians at the thresholds between digital arts and culture.
xCoAx was supposed to take place in Graz, Austria, directly adjoining the ALMAT 2020 symposium. Given the CoViD-19 global pandemic, we had to give up the venues at MUMUTH, the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Forum Stadtpark, and Grazer Kunstverein, and re-organise xCoAx 2020 online.
from July 8th online
Wordless: a Conversation with Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman at the End of History
An audio-visual installation by Netherlands-based sound artist Jonathan Reus. Using machine learning algorithms, he invokes an absurd conversation between the late writer and the late composer. This dialogue can be witnessed at the entrance of Forum Stadtpark, visible on two tube monitors and audible through outside speakers. The sparseness of the sound recordings lead the algorithm to create abstract sounds that capture the cadence and timbre of the voices, but it fails to produce comprehensible speech.
24.07.2020 - 04.09.2020
Forum Stadtpark
Arising from a collaboration between ALMAT and EU project MAST (Master Module in Art, Science and Technology) at the Institute of Spatial Design of TU Graz, the outcome is a spatial and sound installation, the sound composition of which—a cascading coupling between the systems of Pirrò and Rutz—has been developed during artistic research iteration 5.
01.08.2020 - 28.08.2020
esc media art lab Graz
A sound installation by Hanns Holger Rutz that looks at the pure productivity, the intrinsic motion of an automated writing process, a process in which computers endlessly rewrite sonic gestures based on an already available “stream” of sound, such as radio broadcast. This stream is deconstructed by focusing solely at the acoustic self-similarity of the sounds, demoting semantic information to the background, and bringing the act of connection, drift and simultaneity to the foreground, as well as the material quality of projecting the sound onto physical objects (Petri dishes).
A generative, site specific sound installation conceived by Daniele Pozzi for the facade of the atelier and exhibition space Reagenz. The work is installed in a small window niche next to the entrance door and connects a physical setup—consisting of three thin glass surfaces, one pick-up microphone and two transducers—with a digital feedback delay network. The transducers excite the glass, creating two oscillating membranes that project sound outside, and simoultaneously the microphone feeds these vibrations back into the software for further sound processing.
22.08.2020 - 20.09.2020
Reagenz _ Space for Artistic Experiments
An experimental sound installation for Kunsthaus Graz, investigating the possibility of "parallel movement" betwen four artists—Ji Youn Kang, David Pirrò, Daniele Pozzi, Hanns Holger Rutz—and if they will arrive at a shared algorithmic writing.
05.09.2020 - 04.10.2020
Artist talk: 05.09.2020
Kunsthaus Graz
Connecting the different installation venues for Algorithmic Segments, appears a soundwalk by Martin Rumori, Kajetan Enge, and Elisabeth Frauscher. A combination of tour and reflection round, the composition guides the listener from place to place and constructs alternative transitions. A red thread is constructed from the interaction between the public, the spaces and auditory images readable through mobile phone devices.
08.08.2020 - 04.10.2020
opening: 08.08.2020 esc media art lab
public space (mobile phone app)
The ALMAT 2020 symposium is the culminating event, bringing together an international community of artists and researchers concerned with the context and questions arising in ALMAT. Almat 2020 was originally planned to take place (06–07 July) adjoining the 8th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X – xCoAx (08–10 July). Due to the Coronavirus crisis, xCoAx went into an online-only mode, and the Almat symposium has been replaced by an online assemblage of the submitted proposals only. The symposium participatns met online on September 15th 2020 to discuss and confront on the themes and questions that emerged out of their contributions. Recordings of this meetup are available here.
from September 15th online
Reading "Algorithms that Matter"
Presentation at th the 12th International Conference on Artistic Research
Reading "Algorithms That Matter"is a threefold performance of transversal reading, each staged by one of ALMAT's researchers (Hanns Holger Rutz, David Pirro, Daniele Pozzi), and taking the form of a guided tour of the ALMAT Meta Exposition. By choosing which materials to highlight and by composing how to connect them, each guide exposes its take on ALMAT's questions. The tours does not necessarily move along parallel or coinciding paths and does not claim for uniqueness or completeness, but remains subjective and personal. The performance is preceded by an introduction by Luc Döbereiner, who was part of the ALMAT project as artist researcher in 2019 and who was involved in the development and conception of the ALMAT Meta Exposition in 2020-21.
09..04.2021
12th International Conference on Artistic Research
Release of the ALMAT Meta Exposition
We are happy to announce the ALMAT Meta Exposition!
The Meta Exposition is a reorganisation of the vast materials we collected in the project from 2017–2020 in the form of the Continuous Exposition, a network of Research Catalogue entries: texts, sketches, sounds, images, videos, transcriptions, code. In the past year, all these materials were annotated with meta data, and a parser software was developed to store the data in the form of a novel search engine accessible at https://metaexpo.almat.iem.at.
Throughout ALMAT, we built new perspectives on algorithmic agency by subjecting the realm of algorithms to sonic experimentation and diffractive reading. We have worked on several sound and intermedia pieces, invited a number of artists to participate in artistic research residencies, and we collaborated with national and international partners to organise events such as workshops and new formats in artistic research around the topics of ALMAT. The Meta Exposition now offers an alternative way to browse these instances of the project, and to construct new relations. It is itself an instance of algorithmic experimentation, and it augments the familiar hypertext interface of the Research Catalogue with a search engine.