Damian Stewart

Expanding the body of work begun with Now We Know and Luciolinae, Now They Know investigates the ways we perceive rhythm and relationships between events and entities. Although each light element in Now They Know has no programmed relation to its neightbours, we find ourselves perceiving parts of the group and even the whole group as larger entities, to the point of sensing a kind of communication between the individual elements.

The work makes use of the chaotic behaviour of groups of oscillators. If left to operate independently, each oscillator would eventually relax into a steady state; however when multiple oscillators are placed in proximity they will tend to lock phases and forge short or long term relationships with each other. Through particular selection of timings, the oscillators that comprise Now They Know drift and snap in and out of phase with one another, led by constantly shifting attractive and repulsive forces to search for a kind of dynamic equilibrium in time.

Exhibited at eSeL‘s Rezeption, Museumsquartier, Vienna in 2011.

Luciolinae evokes the mating songs of humpback whales, or the bellowing of shipping freighters drifting through a bay on a foggy night. The signals passing back and forth between the Luciolinae are primal utterances of presence. Their utterances are so much a part of their being that the utterances and the beings are nearly not worth speaking of in separate terms: they are entities whose only function seems to be to communicate amongst themselves.

As viewers we observe them, like microbes in a petri dish. Their technological nature and aesthetic are reminders to us that we are the universe obser ving itself. Though their utterances are foreign and artif icial, they bear as much relation to us as humans as to the technology that spawned them. Though we do not understand their language, we can watch it play out its patterns. These patterns of utterance give an impression analogous to the kind of mental model from which language first emerged.

(Text by Sofy Yuditskaya)

Artistic and Technical Description (pdf)

Exhibited at Galerija Kapelica, Ljubljana, 16-27 August 2010.

Built using openFrameworks and Pure Data, and produced during a residency at Kiberpipa. Financial suport provided by the Municipality of Ljubljana & the Ministry of Culture, Slovenia.

Each presentation of Wind takes the form of a temporary intervention, constructed around a site-specific visual environment of objects that are moving in the wind, such as a tree or a field of tall grass. A video camera records images of this visual environment. The images are directed through a digital processing system that extracts fields of motion and mathematically transforms these into fields of sound. The fields of sound are in turn reproduced through loudspeakers placed within the original environment.

Heard and seen together, the sound fields and visual environment form a tight cybernetic feedback loop. The sound fields guide and enhance the viewer’s visual experience, focusing their visual attention toward particular kinds of visual motion. This strengthened visual experience guides and enhances the viewer’s sonic experience, focusing their sonic attention toward particular kinds of sonic motion. This feedback loop creates a strong interconnection between the visual and the sonic within the mind of the viewer, leading to momentary states of complete attention to the different senses, and an overall heightened awareness of the beauty that is present.

Artistic and Technical Description (pdf)

Wind has been exhibited in 2008 at O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal and in 2009 at the 6th aDA Symposium, Wellington, New Zealand.

Following a grant from NetzNetz/Wien Kultur in 2011, a battery powered vision processing module incorporating an amplifier was developed, which allows exhibition in any outdoor environment.

Made with openFrameworks and Pure Data, with production completed during a New Interfaces for Performance residency.

   

Rather than refering to this as a form of Augmented Reality technology, we consider The Artvertiser an example of Improved Reality.

The project was initiated by Julian Oliver in February 2008 and is being developed in collaboration with Damian Stewart. It has appeared in full working form in street exhibitions in Berlin as part of Transmediale 2010, in Brussels for the Europe wide Media Facades Festival, in four inner-city walks during Rotterdam's Image Festival, and in Helsinki in 2011 during a workshop hosted by m-cult.

More at The Artvertiser website.

These three states are repeated, in this same sequence, endlessly. The endless nature of the repetition implies a cause-and-effect cycle at work, each state causing the following state. Each individual work in the edition has its own timing pattern and adjustable tuning, and in the combination of multiple singular works, patterns emerge between the lights, between the sounds, and within both light and sound together. Due to differing perceptive capabilites and predispositions, these patterns are perceived differently by each observer.

An edition of 20 was produced and sold during ARTmART 2010, Kunstlerhaus, Vienna.

Now We Know follows on from the Luciolinae series of installations that were exhibited during 2010 at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Galerija Kapelica in Ljubljana, and Gazebo (as Art in Public Space) in Vienna. These works are based on studies of perception, especially regarding particular patterns in artifical constructs giving rise to the impression of organic life and behaviour.

Production of the boxes was completed at Happylab, Vienna.

Working with Zachary Lieberman and Joel Gethin Lewis from YesYesNo and musician Daito Manabe, I designed lighting patterns and wrote software to control over 1000 architectural lighting fixtures installed on the facade of the new Ars Electronica museum.

Lights On! consisted of both performance and a permanent installation components. The performance, featuring light patterns synchronised to music especially composed for the piece by Daito Manabe, premiered just before midnight on New Year's Eve, and was repeated for the Ars Electronica Museum opening celebrations on Jan 2 and 3. The installation component features a simulated planetary system honouring the scientist and astronomer Johannes Kepler, and will run throughout 2009.

Made with openFrameworks.

links:

• YesYesNo: http://yesyesno.com
• Daito Manabe: http://daito.ws
• openFrameworks: http://openframeworks.cc

The app works by gaining access to pixel data for videos stored on the device. The pixel data is loaded into an OpenGL ES texture. The various fragments of the kaleidoscope effect are then rendered as OpenGL quads and triangles.

During interaction a recorder stores user touches and swipes, saving them so that they can be replayed later.

Apps feature GPS-based 'nearby' search, heavy use of tags and metadata, and a comprehensive and effective search system.

I was responsible for the complete data architecture design, as well as providing user interface design consultancy, specifically around navigation and application flow.

With more than 450 entries for each application, the database is stored and managed entirely on Google Spreadsheets, making it very easy for the client to keep the content up to date.

Human-generated electromagnetic waves are traveling over, around and through us all the time. Wifi, cellphones, radio, and television broadcast all create electromagnetic fields that are 'loud' compared to the natural background, but imperceptible to the human senses. This invisible world is alive with activity that directly reflects our growing relationship to and dependence on, technology.

With specialized devices sensitive to changes in electromagnetic fields, detected changes are converted into electrical signals and a unique landscape of sound and structure is slowly uncovered. Snarling wires pulsate and grow in wild masses, cellular-like forms explode as bit torrents download files, and subtle reeds dance and dangle as cellular phone signals cross the room.

Exhibited

2.09: Vida 11.0, Matadero, Madrid, Spain
1.08: Medialab-Prado, Madrid, Spain

Credits

Damian Stewart
Chris Sugrue
Servando Barreiro
Carla Capeto
Mariana Caranza
María José Alós Esperón
Sergio Manuel Galán Nieto

Thanks to!

Daniel Canogar
Fabi and the Matadero Crew
Medialab Prado
Hans-Christoph Steiner
Francisco López
La Casa De Velázquez

The visualisation is projected from overhead on to a 6m diameter circular relief map table. Visitors to the installation can interact with the visualisation using 9 iPod devices installed around the table. Currently on display at Amsterdam RAI.

RjDj is an iPhone application that uses Pure Data to provide a realtime interactive generative sound experience on the iPhone.

Winner of Best Visual Arts in the Wellington Fringe Festival 2007, Sounds Like Light, Lights Like Sound uses computer vision technology, open source software including PureData and OpenCV, and hand-built LED lighting controlled through a Wiring or Arduino board, to transport you to a world where your movements create subtle shifting patterns of sound and light. It responds to your movements, and it is sensitive enough in its responses that it enables a space to be played, intuitively, like a musical instrument.

Physically, an interior space, access to which is physically and psychologically disconnected from ordinary reality by way of neglected service entrances, utilitarian maintenance corridors, and finally darkness, is augmented with sensory technology and light and audio producing equipment, so that within it, additional spatial dimensions take form through light and sound.

Having passed through the neglected service entry and utilitarian maintenance corridors that make up the entrance, upon arriving to the actual space of the artwork, the visitor is immediately aware they have entered somewhere where the normal rules of vision and hearing do not apply. The slightest movement within the space causes audible changes (changes to the synthesized soundscape) and visible changes (dramatic changes in the colour and intensity of the lighting of the space). Audiences soon discover that the rules underlying the relationships between their movement and these aural and visual changes can only be learnt by experimentation and play.

Furthermore, the system is sufficiently sensitive, and the movement -- sound -- light mappings are sufficiently intuitive, that visitors to the installation find themselves able to perform the space as if it were a musical instrument after just a few minutes of experimentation. The physical isolation of the darkened space frees visitors from any social pressure, any sense that they are being watched, and so they feel able to act in as free a way as they wish.

(Late on a Saturday evening in early November 2007, an altered version of Sounds Like Light, Lights Like Sound was briefly installed on Rua da Rosa, Bairro Alto, Lisboa, Portugal. In this context the piece acted as an audiovisual augmentation to the homeward journeys of people out on the town in Lisbon, briefly lighting up the street and creating a small soundscape whenever a member of the public walked underneath it.)