Electronic Arts > Synthesizer Art
Digital Rose, 2012--a performance art piece by ten Adams and Amy Collins-Ritchie.
Digital Rose, 2012
We live and produce art in a unique environment: the era of mass culture and mass data.
Our access to data, information, imagery, and technology is unprecedented (beyond anything even Walter Benjamin could have imagined) and we are constantly bombarded by stimuli. This new climate is called “PoPoMo” (or Post-Post-Modern) by some and “the Information Age” by others and within it artists play with shared data, appropriation, sampling, and arrangement. Some say we've reached the “end” of images due to oversaturation, but theorists like Bruno Latour see beyond the limitation of style and technique. He believes artists have the ability to interrupt this endless cascade of images by changing context and including layers of media beyond the traditional.
In true Information Age fashion, our synthesizer project is a synthesis of image and sound, re-contextualized.
We begin with an appropriated music video, which is a computer visualization of a piece of electronic music. The electronic music is based on the life of a flower, which is then translated through digital sound, digitally generated video reacting to the sound, and then further abstracted with our handmade synthesizer. Our photosensitive chip responds to the visualization of the visualization, creating a new melody which is several steps removed from the original.
Our second synthesizer plays the harmony, in response to the melody. Rather than conceptually depicting a flower through digital means, it more directly connects the digital technology to a physical, natural plant. The interplay of light, sound, and form speaks to the unique connection we've formed between nature and technology.
The Performance
Digital Rose is a real-time, live synthesizer sound performance.
For Digital Rose, Amy Collins-Ritchie and Ren Adams did a live performance using two handmade breadboard synthesizers.
One synthesizer was equipped with a light sensitive receiver, which reacted in real time to the appropriated music video. The other was equipped with wires and used to physically interact with real carnations. The light-reactive synthesizer provided harmony and the wire-reactive synthesizer was inserted into actual flower parts to create a moving melody. The one-time performance took place in September, 2012. Ren Adams controlled the synthesizer which responded to the video and Amy Collins-Ritchie animated the botanical specimens with wires.
We live and produce art in a unique environment: the era of mass culture and mass data.
Our access to data, information, imagery, and technology is unprecedented (beyond anything even Walter Benjamin could have imagined) and we are constantly bombarded by stimuli. This new climate is called “PoPoMo” (or Post-Post-Modern) by some and “the Information Age” by others and within it artists play with shared data, appropriation, sampling, and arrangement. Some say we've reached the “end” of images due to oversaturation, but theorists like Bruno Latour see beyond the limitation of style and technique. He believes artists have the ability to interrupt this endless cascade of images by changing context and including layers of media beyond the traditional.
In true Information Age fashion, our synthesizer project is a synthesis of image and sound, re-contextualized.
We begin with an appropriated music video, which is a computer visualization of a piece of electronic music. The electronic music is based on the life of a flower, which is then translated through digital sound, digitally generated video reacting to the sound, and then further abstracted with our handmade synthesizer. Our photosensitive chip responds to the visualization of the visualization, creating a new melody which is several steps removed from the original.
Our second synthesizer plays the harmony, in response to the melody. Rather than conceptually depicting a flower through digital means, it more directly connects the digital technology to a physical, natural plant. The interplay of light, sound, and form speaks to the unique connection we've formed between nature and technology.
The Performance
Digital Rose is a real-time, live synthesizer sound performance.
For Digital Rose, Amy Collins-Ritchie and Ren Adams did a live performance using two handmade breadboard synthesizers.
One synthesizer was equipped with a light sensitive receiver, which reacted in real time to the appropriated music video. The other was equipped with wires and used to physically interact with real carnations. The light-reactive synthesizer provided harmony and the wire-reactive synthesizer was inserted into actual flower parts to create a moving melody. The one-time performance took place in September, 2012. Ren Adams controlled the synthesizer which responded to the video and Amy Collins-Ritchie animated the botanical specimens with wires.
Video copyright information: Video created by DOSE Productions (Sam Hayles), 2010.
Track "The Rose of Jericho" from These Hopeful Machines, copyright 2010 BT.
I make no claim to ownership of this video and the use of it in this art project was strictly for the sake of conceptual artistic expression, and not for any commercial purpose.
Track "The Rose of Jericho" from These Hopeful Machines, copyright 2010 BT.
I make no claim to ownership of this video and the use of it in this art project was strictly for the sake of conceptual artistic expression, and not for any commercial purpose.
