Rynth – Sonic Acts XIII – The Poetics of Space

Dataisnature is soon off to the Netherlands to participate in Sonic Acts XIII – The Poetics of Space, which is spread out over a number of venues in Amsterdam, and runs from 25-28th February.

‘Sonic Acts The Poetics of Space is entirely dedicated to the exploration of space in performative and audiovisual art, film, music and architecture. It examines the importance of physical space in times of far-reaching technological developments, and the physical and psychological impact of spatial designs.

The programme comprises four densely filled days and nights and will provide an extensive overview of recent works and experiments – spatial audio compositions, audiovisual installations and performances – and includes relevant historical examples and utopian ideals and dreams from the twentieth century. ‘

The full program for Sonic Acts XIII can be found here in PDF format.

On Sunday 28th I will give a lecture at the festival conference as part of the Gardeners of the Future Session. In the lecture I will explore many of the computational analogies and algorithmic models of Earth processes. In Generative Spaces: The Spatiotemporal Subroutines of Runtime Planet, you can expect to hear about the hydrodynamic computations, metamorphic algorithms, aeolian protocols and sonic mechanism that define the generative spaces around us. Later in the day I will give a performance of my updated RyNTH piece, at the Beyond Space event located at the Planetarium Artis, Amsterdam.

‘The title of the thirteenth Sonic Acts Festival, The Poetics of Space, is derived from the English translation of the book La Poétique de l’Espace (1958) by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. In this work Bachelard meticulously describes the influence of space and architecture on humans and implicitly argues for a new type of architecture based on experience and imagination, an approach that is not only rooted in science or functionality.’

Drop me a line if you are in town.

Pamukkale 258/365 – Chris5aw & Travertines, Pamukkale – Dachalan

The Cotton Castle of Pamukkale, situated in South-Western Turkey, comprises of a range of terraces known as travertines. Hydrodynamic distribution of trace carbonate minerals combined with deposition processes generate a 160m high cascade of steps. On closer inspection undulating ridges and rhythmic patterns can be seen on the surfaces of the steps. These ‘fossilized’ cellular patterns are engraved through the deposition of minerals while the geothermal water flows chaotically over the surface. As such, these patterns are space-time visualisations of the ensuing fluid turbulence as it makes its path via tiny eddies and whorls to its final destination. This process is much the same as the generative build up of sinter terraces at Roto-Màhàna, noted in a previous post.

Constructivist Study – Steve Mason

Microblogged: recent selected tweets from my Twitter stream. Note: Some tweets have additional descriptions, overriding their original 140 character limit.

Lightning Fields – The dendritic aesthetics of electrical discharges on photographic dry plates – Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Atlaseobscura reports on the Morning Glory Pool, a natural wonder at the point of environmental disaster. The bright concentric colour bands are generated by Thermophilic Bacteria.

Christian Bok’s ‘The Xenotext’ Experiment is a literary exercise that explores the aesthetic potential of genetics to create a poem, doing so in order to make literal the renowned aphorism of William S Burroughs, who declared “the word is now a virus.”

16-bit Intel 8088 chip, a poem by Charles Bukowski, laments the incompatibility between certain types of, now obsolete, data storage formats.

Sonumbra, by Loop, is a sonic parasol utilising electroluminescent fibres.

Julie Karabenick creates geometric pixillated abstractions, their pulsing circuits contain the ghost of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie.

Mitchell Whitelaw creates transduced weather jewelry in the form of a 3D printed bracelet, the form is derived from 365 days of local weather data.

Lightning Fields – Hiroshi Sugimoto

Constructivist Study by Steve Mason. A generative set of cubes expand and sprawl into a randomised anti-gravitorial composition.

Digital Acoustic Cartography, by Daniel Rothaug, is an interactive experiment in mapping sonic events into a concrete visual language.

Andre Michelle has implemented an audio reactive version the Superformula in Actionscript 3.

Subblue creates a 4D Quaternion Julia Set Ray Tracer that generates extra dimensional curvaceous forms of self-similarity.

In conjunction with The Wire magazine, some music of constraint. 22 musical compositions by artists from around the world, where each piece was created with just 140 characters of code in SuperCollider.

Melvin Galapon’s prints explore computer monitor pixel geometry and strobing effect of TV static in a minimal graphic fashion.

Ant Scott’s Repetitive Beats series of prints are created using his flat panel luminograph technique. The results have the trademark broken glitch aesthetic. Listening closely we hear the scattered techno of neo-Op-Art .

Chris Scarborough’s drawing evokes a kind of deconstructed, Arcimboldo-esque transformer portrait.