Transpositions
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Transpositions
Hypercolumns
David Pirrò
for 15 Akustische Instrumente
Zentrum für Kunst und Medien) in the context of the festival GLOBALE: Tangible Sound, 2015
Speaker matrix
Sound installation
Gerhard Eckel, David Pirrò
Vienna/Austria, 2016
A neural network is a compound of entangled objects. A convoluted collection of nodes and connections between them; an inextricable knot in which pulses spread from one point to the others in complicated patterns. Each single element contributes to the behaviour of the whole network: a vibration pulsating in a strange oscillation and appearing as an coherent phenomenon. Speaker Matrix uses data of a simulated neural network modelling how memory recall processes in our brains might function. The sound installation moulds this data, expands and stretches it in time and space, by slowing it down and, without breaking its internal connections, kneading it into a rectangularly shaped dough. Into this ”lump”, 30 probes are inserted, arranged in a matrix: these are auscultation points through which one loudspeaker makes audible what happens around each position. As all loudspeakers play at the same time, the Speaker Matrix transposes the behaviour of the neural network into a sound that, according to the intricate spreading of signals through the network, exhibits spatial movements, vibrations that travel through the loudspeaker arrangement and through the exhibition space.
Jackfield
Headphone Sound Installation
Gerhard Eckel, David Pirrò, Michele Seffino
Vienna (Austria)
The Jackfield exposes the dynamics of simulated neural activity as binaural soundscape. Different timbrical and spatial perspectives can be adopted by the listener through manually browsing the 81 transpositions layed out in a matrix of headphone jack sockets. Through different extents of filtering (arranged along one axis of the matrix) neuronal spikes (perceived as bright events in the foreground of the sound texture) can be separated to different degrees from the continuous changes in the cell potentials (audible as much duller background events). Acoustically, the cells are grouped in a binaural simulation of the Angewandte Innovation Laboratory (AIL) gallery spaces, for which the Jackfield was produced and has been exhibited in the context of the Transpositions research event DA TA rush: Transposition not Exhibition in May 2016. Different cell configurations and virtual listening positions (arranged along the other axis of the matrix) expose the complex temporal relationships among groups of cell. Whenever the listener inserts the headphone jack into a socket, the looped signal starts from an initial position, easing an exploration of the space of differences established by the Jackfield.
Reconfigurations
Videoinstallation
Gerhard Eckel, David Pirrò, Michael Schwab
2016
Reconfigurations is a transposition of neuronal activity patterns created in a super-computer simulation of memory processes in the brain. In the particular simulation used for Reconfigurations, the neurons reactivated memorised patterns spontaniously, i.e. without external stimulus, which provoked our curiosity. The neurons were grouped in 81 cortical modules and the correlation of the activities among all these groups have been calculated, forming a high-dimensional space. By means of a dynamical system this space has been projected onto 2 dimensions. Each point moving on the resulting plane corresponds to the activities of one group of neurons. The distances between the points are related to the correlations between the activities of the respective cortical modules. Points closer to each other show a higher correlation than points further apart. The visible behaviour of the points is the result of two dynamical systems: one that creates the behaviour of the neuronal network and the other one trying to negotiate the ever changing degree of correlation between the activities of the neuronal modules. In its attempt to reduce the complexity of the high-dimensional space to a plane, Reconfigurations reduces the spatial complexity at the expense of introducing temporal complexity.
Transpositions: Data Rush
Not Exposition
Gerhard Eckel, Michael Schwab, Artemi-Maria Gioti, David Pirrò
Angewandte Innovation Lab (AIL), Vienna, 2016
DA TA rush was a transposition, not an exhibition. It engaged with artificial neural networks, brain activity, architectural mapping, motion capture, galaxy cluster surveys and modelling, particle physics, dynamical systems simulations, room impulse response measurements, air flow turbulences, and sonic textures. The transposition investigated emergent formal and perceptual relationships between data events distributed across the gallery. A set of triggers excited a dynamic system, which articulated and integrated what was performed in DA TA rush. DA TA rush asked if it is possible to liberate data from its representational duties. It enacted data as an imaginary, lived body between the various material elements, human bodies included. How does data pass from one form to another? Are there artistic forms capable of associating what seems highly diverse?
The Illusion of Simultaneity
Sound Installation
Gerhard Eckel, David Pirrò, Martin Rumori
The idea of someone on the other side of the globe doing something at the very same time as somebody else is doing something here and now relies on a certain notion of simultaneity. Such a notion most likely did not exist before Standard Time had been established only about a century ago. Global synchronisation at ever greater precision is required for global navigation, travel, and communication. But can there be an actual experience of simultaneity or does it remain an abstract idea? The installation The Illusion of Simultaneity explores this question. It has been created for the research event Transpositions: From science to art (and back) which took place October 4-6 2017 in Stockholm / Sweden. Acoustic signals were generated by reactive sound sculptures at each of the five Stockholm venues of the event. Simultaneously, five sculptures were gathered in one room at a central location where they interacted more directly, forming a local dynamical system. The question posed to the audience then was: "Will you allow your experience to construct a network spanning the city of Stockholm?". A transposition of the installation has been presented at the research event Exploring Formants, Enhancing Practice in Graz.
Complexity and Complication
Live-Elektronik Koncert-Installation
Gerhard Eckel, Luc Derycke, David Pirrò, Martin Rumori
Stockholm (Sweden) 2017 and Graz (Austria) 2018
Data analysis is about turning information into understanding and knowledge. Scientists use a large array of powerful tools to filter, sort, cluster, correlate, and contextualise data. Generally, they aim at reducing complexity which is considered an obstacle for the extraction of information, on the path towards knowledge. Artistic data exploration as practiced in the project Transpositions does not aim at reducing but at embracing complexity, and uses it as an instrument to search for the boundary regions between understanding and sensual experience. By having a complex body of data encounter a complex system of exploration designed according to aesthetic criteria, usually a situation is generated which retains (and maybe augments) complexity rather than diminishing it. The goal is not to answer existing questions or solving known problems but to generate new ones gaining different perspectives on the data, which would be otherwise out of reach. Complexity and Complication is a concert installation performed by Gerhard Eckel, David Pirrò, and Martin Rumori using the DA TA catalogue to aurally explore data from molecular biosciences, computational neuroscience, particle physics, and cosmology.