Even if I didn't have yet the possibility to listen to the space in a concentrate manner. thinking of the space we are going to interact with (projecting by ear into), its surface, its function(s) and its structure, I can imagine that the most prominent acoustic / aural phenomena I would probably "lock" into, are two: rhythms and resonances.

{function: contextual}


Synchronisation / interaction


With Rhythms I refer to recurring, self similar sonic pattern, as for example, the steps of someone going up or down the stairs, or the closing of doors producing a short sequence impulses with different energies. But also patterns that emerge on bigger time scales, like the activity patterns between day and night, across weeks and weekends etc.


The installation process picks those patterns up and integrates them into its own evolution. In a process of continuous synchronization, reaction and interaction with the space and the its inhabitants, the installation would lock into those patterns mimicking, but also slightly bending them.


Interaction with those patters, slightly changing them, bending them into a different pattern, recomposing them, should happen through acoustic interaction. How strong this bending or re-composition could be is probably determined by how effective the patterns produced by the algorithm are in interacting with the space's patterns.


Which are the regions of effective interaction? How to find them?


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Temporal scales


Of course patterns and resonant frequencies are faces of the same medal. They are both "resonances" (here in a metaphorical sense) which operate on different time scales.
The process should listen and perceive resonances on very different time scales. Ranging from milliseconds to, possibly, days or even weeks and months.


Compute energy patterns over different time scales. As I don't want to use storage, use integration algorithms.

 

The above, without storing data, could probably be difficult to achieve, mainly because of the limited dynamics of the numbers representation we are using.


Downsampling could be helpful. That is, there should be multiple processes, running on parallel but with different rates.


 

{function: question, keywords: [patterns, resonances, frequency, time scales, integration, memory, downsampling]}

 





Being part / deviations 

 

Our works will form an ecology with the space. They will not just be installed into the space, they will interact with it, listening to themselves through it, modifying it and ultimately grow into is to be part of the space itself. The works, their specific appearances and behaviour will be tightly tied to the space they are in.


It is easier to let the complete system of all installations and the space, evolve autonomously to an new equilibrium. It might however be more interesting to highlight exactly this movement of deviation or of evolution enacted by the system. I image that would highlight how our processes grow into, and actually interact the space, absorbing and metabolizing its acoustic properties.


Everything our works will inject into this space, will change it. That is, our works will, in any case, cause the space's acoustic characteristics to deviate from their behaviour.


Our works will create new patters that will inject into the same space they would be (in some way) derived from. And in turn then be object of observation from which again new patterns may be derived. We might generate sort of self feeding system that continuously unfolds always changing. Maybe we want to have a handle on how this process unfolds.

 

Can these deviations be somehow subject to composition? That is, how could it be possible to "compose" which "form" the deviations we will provoke have and how big these are?


 

Stop / start / stop / re-start



{function: question, keywords: [ecology, space, interaction, listening, deviation, evolution, equilibrium, acoustics, composition, form]}

 

 


DP: Initiating Questions

 

Network / meshwork


Our works will form an acoustical mesh in the space, an altered memory. How, in the context of each of the four works, will we take into account the interaction with the others? Which strategies can we devise, that go beyond simple (first order) rules like "if the others play loud (or above a certain threshold), this process will attenuate its output". 


To be clear, the simple rules like the one before, may create already a very complex temporal behaviour (depending also on the temporal scale each employs). I just think, that this part of the interaction between the works should be also taken into consideration as an aspect which is shared, a "rule" that may find different incarnations or implementations in each work, nevertheless a shared rule.

 
How are we going to interact with each other?

 

We had thought that we may exchange information between the works using a kind of protocol, that is still to be defined.

 


I'm not sure on how to do this.

 

This has to do with my personal fundamental problem with paradigms of communication or information exchange, where it is defined a priori, how information has to be brought into a communicable form and how that information has to be extracted from a message. The idea is to limit the danger of mis-understanding or error in the communication of some meaning. But I like mis-understandings.

 

Somehow I would like to be able to re-interpret what I receive from you. Maybe even misinterpret.


Is it viable to just exchange some channels of sound? It does not have to be the same sound the works are projecting into the space: maybe some intermediate stage of the sound synthesis?



{function: question, keywords: [acoustics, mesh, memory, interaction, rules, protocol, communication, information, interpretation]}

Resonance / memory


With resonances I refer to the resonant frequencies of the space. Given its material textures, its structure, its dimensions, specific resonance have been inscribed into the space, resonances which produce specific frequencies will be clearly perceivable when the space is excited. Also, these are frequencies towards which sounds in the space would in some sense "fall into" (some sort of attractors).


These resonances are memory of the geometrical and all material properties of the space, of who uses the space and how, of the architect's plans, if its function etc. To say that these resonances "contain" these "information" would be reductive: they emerge from a continuous interaction of the space with the entities passing through it but also, and mostly, by a process of self-interaction and feedback.


Memory is not some object stored somewhere. It is a process of writing and rewriting continuously into and onto.

 

The process should not use memory in a "classical" literal sense, i.e. as a something written onto somewhere. Rather, the structure of the interactions between the processes living in it should allow for resonances to emerge in relation to its interaction with the space and should be able to change and adapt to changes.

 


Memory should remain a pure process.

 

 

Don't use files.


 
It the process extends towards big (from a human perspective) time scales, then we are taking about resonances.


Making resonances more clearly audible, bringing them to the surface of perception, could also render the space itself more sensible, its characteristics and its "memory more perceivable.


 


 

 

 

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author: DP
artwork: ThroughSegments
project: AlgorithmicSegments

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keywords: [questions, proposal, brainstorming]
---

Parallel / Scale Invariance


I feel that the idea of "parallelism" that is running through the project, from the beginning, may be made more central, it may be a "generative principle".

 

Driven by my practice, I imagine we are dealing with multiple interconnected feedback processes: For instance we have a feedback loop between each of works and the space (through the microphone). Then between each work and the others etc.

 
All these processes are in some sense parallel to each other. Not in the sense that they are completely encapsulated in themselves, unaffected by other processes. But in the sense that I imagine them sharing some sort of similarity and following an evolution that is on a somewhat independent path, still allowing for deviations induced by interactions with the others. And these all operate on and with similar (parallel) temporal scales.

 

May we think of a "parallelism" that transgresses different temporal scales? Similar processes that operate on an with (and through) different scales of time?

 
A sort of scale invariance: processes repeat similarly in and along "long" times and "small" times.

 

Scale invariance is a property of fractals you may have seen: "zooming in" into a fractal offers a "picture" which is similar in form and quality to the bigger picture. Invariance means that looking at the fractal from different zoom levels will not give any hint of the zoom level.


 


 

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