Darwin Grosse

Long-time Max user, artist, and educator Ali Momeni discusses his current projects including Minneapolis Art on Wheels and the Spark Festival.  Ali shares how he got involved with Max and shares his latest work with us.

Ali, could you give us some background about where you are, how you got there and what you are working on?

I’m currently teaching at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Art.

I come from music composition; I studied with David Wessel (i.e. Yoda) and Edmund Camption at CNMAT, UC Berkeley. I was introduced to real-time creative usage of computers through music, at CNMAT, in Berkeley. Over the 4 year course of my doctoral studies at Berkeley, and the 2 years of dissertation research I did in Paris, I came to the conclusion that the world of contemporary music was too stifling, conservative and close-minded for where I saw my practice headed. So, using a number of early musical/sculptural pieces (like Jolastic, or Frelia) I made a transition into the visual arts, and I have been active in the interdisciplinary world of new media art every since.

 I was born in Iran and moved to the US at the age of 12. My story is somewhat typical of a 1st generation Middle Eastern immigrant; I had parents that wanted me to Achieve with a capital A. This meant becoming a doctor, if not a lawyer – and if all else fails then an engineer. So I studied a lot of math and science early on, took physics and music as a double  major, and was also pre-med (I even took the MCAT's applied to med school and all that).

That explains your ease of work in both the art and technical environments. Given that you started in music, how difficult was it to move into the world of visuals - how difficult was it to get people to take you seriously as an artist?

Neither was particularly difficult. By the end of my graduate career, I was already making work that wasn't designed for the stage or the concert hall, but rather for the museum, gallery or other alternative spaces. I also came into the visual arts as a self-declared and proud outsider; when it comes to work with technologies, few disciplines train their pupils as rigorously as musicians. This gave me a strong advantage in the visual art world because I not only had a firm understanding of the wiring of things as well as real-time software development techniques.

I’d also studied and creatively used a fair bit of math and physics, which comes in handy…

You are well-known in the Max community; your aLib is a tremendous bank of objects, abstractions and help patches, and your work on the Maxuino project is helping to engage hardware into the software environment. Of your work with technologies of different types, what excites you the most?

The Maxuino work is exciting; I’m pleased to help electronic musicians gain access to physical computing, within environments they are comfortable with (i.e. Max or Ableton). I’m also very deeply engaged with live video work right now, thanks to my group Minneapolis Art on Wheels. I’ve been fortunate to have some very accomplished and advanced developers as a part of my research team (Chris Baker, Aaron Westre). Our upcoming mawLib library for live-urban-projection will be a significant contribution to the expanding medium of urban projection interventions.

But the project that I’m most excited about is one called The Liminal Surface, collaboration with long time friend and co-maker David Bithell. Liminal Surface is a tabletop musical theater environment that integrates audio, video, analog and digital sensors, and computer based control of physical media (e.g. musical robotics) – all in a rehearsed, staged, theatrical setting.

Another thing I’m very excited about is related to my curatorial efforts, something I’m dedicating more and more time to. Between the MAW Artist in Residence Program and the Spark Festival (which I direct), I’ll be bringing many regional, national and international artists to town. This is always a great pleasure.

Speaking of the Minneapolis Art on Wheels, this project surfaces in almost any conversation where your name comes up. It has obviously struck a chord with both artists and the public, and has a real buzz around it. Can you give us a little more background on its creation and your vision for its future?

When I arrived in Minneapolis in 2007, I wanted to establish a community (research team) and an agenda (research topic) that could bring together a number of my interests: software/hardware development, public engagement, live performance with computers. Anyone whose passed thru Minneapolis knows about the bike scene here. It is uncanny;  the community is tight, strong and fearless. Many in this group will bike all the way thru the Minnesota winter, some in fixies the whole year.

Maker Profile - Public Projections on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

My past work with Sony CSL [Sony Computer Science Labs] (in collaboration with my old friend and mentor Atau Tanaka) had gotten me interested in how physical and digital mobility can interact with creative practices, I began writing about and seeking funding for a public arts group that would marry the bike culture, with mobile media, with live performance.

I started MAW in the spring of 2008 with a class full of enthusiastic students.

Within months, a number of generous funding schemes came through, allowing me to establish a more formal research structure as well as an engaged (i.e. employed) community of ambassadors, performers and developers. My vision for MAW's future is to contribute to the body of research that surrounds mobile media and live performance in public spaces (mawLib and onwards), but also to continue and expands MAW's role as a commissioning body for generating new works for this emerging medium. We are focusing on live participatory performance in public spaces that leverages mobile/real-time digital technologies as well as analog/physical/gestural interfaces.

2008.06.19 Minnehaha Falls from Ali Momeni on Vimeo.

The last time I was in Minneapolis, you gave a short demonstration of the framework that is becoming the Liminal Surface. Could you spend a few minutes introducing us to that? It's fascinating, and seems to be tapped into the zeitgeist of mechanical+computing art and performance.

Sure… The idea came from a performance that my collaborator David Bithell and I did a few years back.

Table Setting from David Bithell on Vimeo.

This piece introduced the format of a table top, and the notion of small sculptural agents/instruments/actors with which the performers could interact musically, choreographically, and theatrically. Years after, David and I returned to this instrument and decided to expand it significantly. We settled on a design that kept the size and shape of the table the same, but added a large number of inputs (for analog and digital sensors) and outputs (for actuators like motors, servos, solenoids, lights and such).

We essentially made a theatrically presentable large-scale prototyping board. Once a gadget is plugged into the table it's in instant high-speed two-way communication with real-time software – thus allowing us to theatrically compose for the interactions between us and the objects, as well as among the objects themselves.

The idea is in part inspired by Freud's notion of the Uncanny (from his 1931 article, The Uncanny). In this article, Freud points to the unique power of inanimate objects that portray animate behavior: a sculpted skull that appears to speak, an isolated fabricated eyeball that blinks or a pair of disembodied legs that move about as if led by a human mind.

The "Introduction" section from that paper lays it out clearly.

You are the Artistic Director of the Spark Festival.  How did you get involved in that festival, and what do you expect from this year's production?

Spark was one of the important reasons why I took the job at the U of M.  I was aware of it before coming, spoke to Doug Geers (its previous director) during my interviews, and fully intended to get involve and help in whatever way I could.  I co-directed the festival with Doug in 2008 and 2009, and will be directing the 2010 festival (Sep. 28-Oct 2, 2010).

One of my goals with Spark has been to strengthen the cross-media and visual arts components in the festival.   I now select many visual artists as musicians among the featured artists, and I hold many of the activities in the Regis Center for Art (U of M's fantastic art palace).  Starting this year, I also changed the season for Spark – it’s no longer in the dead of the Minnesota winter, but in the beautiful fall season. This shift will also allow us to have outdoor events, cover a greater area in the city and get festival attendees around a lot more easily.

But we had reached a certain limit with winter spark, could not reach any further into unexplored venues/territories/audiences. The warmer weather, possibility of outdoor events, use of bicycles, involvement for MAW – this will all help push Spark forward.

In looking over your website, it appears that you keep up a heavy load of teaching, lecturing and travel as well as your directorship, development and curitorial roles. How do you balance all of this work with having a 'real life'? Or do you have a real life?

I suppose the best way to put it is that my art life is my real life.  All who've been around me during the busiest of times (Spark or otherwise) can attest that I manage to get in more than my share of fun. I’m not married, haven't any children, own no pets and no home, and my car is Japanese (so there is very low maintenance) and all of that amounts to plenty-of-time-in-the-day-to-work.  I've never been one to separate work and play, and it looks like I may have chosen the right field of profession after all.

Ali, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Any last words of encouragement for the Max enthusiasts out there?

These are really exciting times for Max.  After some decades, Max is ever-more-forcefully breaking out of electronic music and becoming an attractive instrument for all manners of creative activity. So all you cats out there that want to make anything talk to anything, get on the bus and come along for the ride...

an-interview-with-ali-momeni

An Interview with Ali Momeni

lyserdellic

First version of “Into the Void”, a series of audiovisual installations exploring physical structures creating light and shadows with immersive audiovisual spaces.

A array of triangles is placed on the floor, each one has a LED strip on the back which are connected to an Arduino.  

Max generates series of random numbers with different probabilities that are used to trigger and manage the lights, visuals and sound.

Max manages the LEDs by communicating with the Arduino through Maxuino. And at the same time MIDI messages are sent to Ableton Live to plays notes on a MIDI Instrument and OSC messages are sent to Processing for the Visual output.

Rodrigo Carvalho (concept, electronics, code and visuals);

Ana Duarte (build and production); André Sousa (Background sounds);

Daniel Correia (filming and photography).

into-the-void

INTO THE VOID

Ezra Gray

Aerial is a generative sound sculpture which produces harmonic tones by resonating 8 tuned aluminium tubes. The way the tubes are played can be changed to suit its environment. Currently I am experimenting with data mining techniques, using data from the web to play Aerial's tubes. The data which I am currently working with is the live location of four satellites in orbit. I used MAX MSP to create all the programming associated with Aerial. 

Aerial is completely modular with the option to change each tube to alter the tuning of the instrument.

Aerial is a generative sound sculpture which produces harmonic tones by resonating 8 tuned aluminium tubes. The way the tubes are played can

aerial

Aerial 

elevatormusicmaker

Max was used to generate a piece of music for three voices: Soprano,tenor and bass. The algorithm randomly chooses the notes for each voice from a list of possible notes, who's size is based on restriction related to the key of the music, interval size, and the intended character of the installation. Max/MSP measures, analyzes and alters these attributes based on the interaction of the user. It does this by receiving data from sensors and uses this information to change different aspects of the music being played.

floating-music

Floating Music

soundslikelind

The Earth Organ is an outdoor interactive sound art experience by Swedish composer/sound artist Anders Lind. Three organ-like musical instruments create an orchestral platform that invites musical interaction. Everyone, regardless of age or musical background, is given the opportunity to be a musician. The world premiere of The Earth Organ was exhibited in the Park of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, Sweden, in the summer of 2022. A Max patch is controlling the behaviors of the Earth Organ. Light sensors are connected through Arduino boards to send data to the Max patch. Concept, composition, and programming by Anders Lind.



The Earth Organ is an outdoor interactive sound art experience by Swedish composer/sound artist Anders Lind. Three organ-like musical instru

the-earth-organ

The Earth Organ

F. C. Zuke

The Word That Binds Them is an interactive installation that invites viewers to interact with several famous books. As viewers open the books, voices from inside each book’s pages begin speaking. These voices belong to the books’ authors and those who hold positions of power in promoting each book’s teachings. As the voices resound from the books, they are also panned up and down five suspended speakers, traversing the vertical length of the gallery. 

When the box of fire reaches its apex, a bright amber-colored light illuminates the gallery and pages are printed in real time, raining down from above. These pages contain passages from the texts that contain both “power” and the dictionary term that was submitted by participants (via Mira). Without knowing the source to which each quotation belongs, viewers are left to consider its origin.

Max was used to read sensor data, to control a motorized winch system, to control an electrical relay switch, and to control 17 channels of audio. 

The Word That Binds Them is an interactive installation that invites viewers to interact with several famous books. As viewers open the book

the-word-that-binds-them

The Word That Binds Them

Cycling '74

At Expo '74 in Brooklyn this year, Max users exhibited their work. Electronic Experiments projects are featured in the third video of the Science Fair series.

Featuring Max Electronic Experiments projects from Tom Zicarelli, Michael O'Bannon, Kevin Holland, Benoit Bouchez, and Chris Coleman.

Electronic Experiments - Science Fair @ Expo '74 2011 - Brooklyn, NY

At the 2011 Expo '74, some Max users exhibited their electronic experiments.

science-fair-projects-part-3

Science Fair Projects, Part 3

Δ∞ [Infinite Delta] is an interactive kinetic installation/performance. A physical structure built by triangular planes and controlled by a series of servomotors. Reacting to the movement of the audience, sound and generative sequences, the structure reacts and modifies its shape.

By augmenting the physical world overlaying it into the digital world, a mixed/parallel reality was created where real elements interacted with virtual ones, in order to create new alternative, magic and hyper-sensorial landscapes to the observer.

Max (through Maxuino) used to control the Arduino and the servo's movements. It was also used  to make the bridge/interaction with the visuals (made with Quartz Composer + VDMX) through OSC messages

By Boris Chimp 504 (Rodrigo Carvalho + Miguel Neto) & Alma D’Arame (Amandio Anastasio)

2016 | IX Encontro Internacional de Marionetas de Montemor-o-Novo.

δ∞-infinite-delta

Δ∞ [Infinite Delta]

Marsha Vdovin

Formally trained and practicing as an architect, artist Filipa Valente forges beyond the expected precincts of surface, space, and form, creating immersive installations where the observer and perception serve as integral elements. Interweaving light, environment, sound, and biomorphic allegory, Valente’s lush environments undulate, palpate and seduce.

We recently chatted about several of her projects, and how she utilizes Max into her creative process by expanding her physical prototyping capabilities while enhancing the interface between image, sound and body.

I’m an architect and an interactive and media artist. My work looks at creating relationships between our bodies as users, the spaces that we inhabit, and the environment around us. 

I design installations that allow us to not only experience space in different ways, by creating immersive experiences, but also link these spaces to the outer world and the environment around them.

How are you linking to the surrounding environment?

Well, for instance, I'll gather data through environmental sensing techniques, or connect to video feeds that are collected throughout the city.  It varies depending on the site and application.

I’m interested in creating immersive installations that combine the different scales and different elements: our bodies, space, and the surrounding environment, into one interface.

To achieve that I’ve experimented with physical prototyping of interactive interfaces where external sensors and users can activate physical responses.

... the data gathered was CO2 concentration, light and sound from the city

Can you describe your Liminoid Garden piece?

Liminoid Garden started off from an experiment with building façade systems, which is like building skins for buildings.  I was looking at ways to activate a skin through readings of the environment, while also researching a system for cladding buildings.

So I designed some physical elements, which I called Liminoid blooms, that are very much inspired by plants and nature.  These elements collect environmental readings, measuring data such as CO2 pollution levels and light intensity.  The sensor readings cause the blooms to react in different ways, in terms of how they move and fluctuate LED lights.

The blooms also had a second form of interaction with the users of the installation space.  They responded to the environment rather slowly, but once people were present in the space of the ‘garden’, they showed a more intense behavior.  It helped differentiate between the two forms of data that the garden was collecting.

I initially conceived a smaller prototype, which evolved into a larger installation. It used the interior of a building, instead of a façade.

For the latest version of this project I integrated another level of interaction with performance artists.  Two dancers from the Heidi Duckler Dance Theater interacted with the very beautiful architectural space where the garden was located and with the blooms.  I designed LED costumes for the dancers that transformed them into another element of the Liminoid Garden.  So it became a piece that was symbiotic.

I’m more interested in generating abstract behaviors or feedback loops

How do you choose what data is relevant for a particular project?

In my work, the data gathered for a project addresses a question or a problem relevant to the space or environment where it’s located.  For the Liminoid Garden project, the data gathered was CO2 concentration, light and sound from the city.  I wanted the sensing in this project to be related to some of the negative aspects of living in a city, such as air, sound and light pollution.  Ironically, the garden ‘breathes’ and feeds itself on this information.

But on the other hand, I also think it's important to involve the users and allow them to add their imprint to the installations. Using proximity or camera sensors, I let the users change the base behaviors that are being generated by the environmental sensors.

In the case of the Liminoid Garden, the responses varied between light fluctuation patterns and actuated movements of the blooms.  The environmental sensing created more subtle reactions in the garden such as light brightness changes and gradients that mimicked a sort of breathing behavior.  The presence of people in the space sparked more noticeable changes like fast and sharp movements of the blooms.

I’m more interested in generating abstract behaviors or feedback loops, rather than creating direct representations of the sensing. I think it leaves the users more intrigued and every discovery becomes more exciting.  I like that the users of my installations don’t get an immediate understanding of what it is doing, and that different people come away from it having different interpretations.

Yes, I did.  I grew up in Portugal, until I was about 18 and then I went abroad to London to study architecture.  All my university education is as an architect.  And I actually do work as an architect.  It’s one of my passions.

While I was in London, around 2009, 2010, I saw a series of intriguing performances that involved light effects and electronic music, but also created very interesting environments as part of a large performance show. I was fascinated by the immersive experiences that I got from these performances and how physical it felt. That made me very interested in developing architecture alongside interactive media arts.

In 2010 I came to Los Angeles to do a media arts and architecture post-graduate course at SciArc.  In terms of programming I was very much an amateur when I came out here, but the course really helped me get a grip on the basics of programming, physical prototyping and other relevant tools and techniques.

Since then I’ve been developing my own media art work, through some festivals and exhibitions that I’ve applied to as well as some events that I now get invited to participate.  It has developed into a kind of parallel practice to my architecture work, which is also very exciting.

To me they both link very naturally due to the concepts of altering space, augmenting, and making spaces that I intervene on a little bit more interesting and more appealing.

I can interface with so many different things like sound, lighting, and images

Were you artistic as a child?  Did you know you wanted to be an architect?

Yes, I was.  By the time I hit high school, I was already very interested in architecture.

Even earlier, in elementary school, I was very lucky in terms of exposure to drawing.  At high school, we had some classes that involved a lot of model making, also using clay.  I was always very attracted to making three-dimensional objects.

At some point it just seemed like a natural thing to look at buildings, and to move on to another level. Taking the objects that I was modeling and drawing and transforming them into spaces that I could inhabit.

The media arts came a little bit later. I had already explored this a bit at university.  I studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College in London, which is quite an experimental architecture school, in terms of creating interesting prototype models — even models that are actuated!  It was great in terms of trying out different ways of looking at design, and coming up with unique ideas for projects.  So it was a big influence as well.

I started in 2010, when I came to study in the U.S at SciArc.  We started off with a class that looked at more typical coding environments, like Processing and Java.  At the time, I was getting along with it, but I always felt like it wasn’t that intuitive, the way that I was working with these tools.

But once we started learning Max, I was immediately much more comfortable with the visual interface that it has. I think of things much more visually than just through pure code.  So I find the diagrammatic way of organizing thoughts in Max helps a lot in developing my work.

I also love the fact that I can interface with so many different things like sound, lighting, and images.  Physical prototyping with it is so much easier.  So it was a really great discovery for me.

We started off with a little bit of a background in coding, using Processing — which is a bit easier for amateur coders, I guess.  So once I got onto to Max, and I knew the basics of writing code, it was much easier for me to me to visualize the connections, through the Max interface.  I definitely found it easier than a more traditional coding environment.

Have you used Max in your media-art work?

The Liminoid project we just discussed doesn't use Max.  Instead the blooms use an internal Arduino system, which connects wirelessly to the other blooms through XBee antennas.

But I have another project, HybridScope City where Max was the key element.  It allowed me to interface between a Kinect sensor, moving image, and physical actuation.

I was interested in tracking the body.  So I used Max to filter data that I was getting through a skeleton-tracking script.  With Max I processed that data and interfaced it not only with image and video but also for generating sound.  The users of the installation were not only changing image, but they were also changing sound as they moved.

I also had an Arduino board connected through a Maxuino Plug-in for Max that controlled a field of LED lights.  Max was perfect in that I was able to have all these different elements integrate through one program, all talking to each other.

That's another thing that I really like about Max, not only can I create my own program, but I also can infinitely customize it.  I’m very much a visual person, so I like the idea that once I finish my small program, I can customize it and have a beautiful interface to use, that's easy to navigate.

Can you describe the concept behind Hybrid Scope project?  You have me intrigued! 

The HybridScope City project was a proposal for the LAX airport.  It used a three-dimensional screen for the lobby areas of the airport.  The installation intended to give a feel of what was going on around the city, in real time, to the users of LAX.

So I built a prototype, a screen that took up a form of a voronoi system.  The screen was divided into multiple small windows.  As you approached the screen, it would give you different snippets of footage that were being collected by users around the city.

The content was collected by people walking around in the city with their phone cameras.  So, it's possible that anyone could hook up to the system and collect footage that would be sent to the airport installation.  This footage was also treated to be abstract, so that it would be more about getting a feel of the city rather than getting a very photorealistic picture. The project collected silhouettes, movements, or shadows of people and random conversations.  The aim being that the user would have an immersive experience of traveling through L.A. while staying in the airport lounge.

I hope that in the future we can make it common practice to embed these technologies and tools into buildings.

Are you able to apply some of these theories to your architectural work? 

The concepts that I research in my installations also apply in my architecture work.  At my job at Synthesis Design + Architecture, we developed some projects that approach new technologies and sensing devices as something that could be embedded in the designs. A lot of these proposals still remain as concepts but some are already commonplace in Architecture.

For example, the use of environmental sensing which interfaces with architecture has been around for a while already, mostly for developing smart building façades that respond to sunlight and weather.  But of course there are multiple other possibilities when it comes to the design of buildings.

Creating intelligent buildings that respond to users movements, speech or even thoughts and states of mind is the next step.  I hope that in the future we can make it common practice to embed these technologies and tools into buildings.

Text interview by Marsha Vdovin and Ron MacLeod for Cycling '74.


Short demo reel of Filipa Valente [limiLAB] work <br />
Media & Interactive Art, Experience design

Filipa Valente [limiLAB] Reel 2010 - 2014

an-interview-with-filipa-valente

An Interview with Filipa Valente

VOICES OF UMEÅ: SINGING INSTRUMENTS! is an exhibition with a bunch of interactive instruments built from everyday objects, with the purpose of exploring experimental music composition through a playful and inspiring process. No instrument training is needed to compose complex music where:

- 4 wheels and a skateboard becomes a rhythmic quintet, 

- 4 water taps becomes a harmonic singing quartet,

- 7 drawers becomes a sound composition machine.

MAX/MSP was used as the master controller of the electronic process when interacting with the instruments. Different sensors are connected to the everyday objects through an arduino mega card. Then the signals are translated through MAXUINO into MAX/MSP. A number of samplers with different buffers and sound controller elements are created in MAX/MSP to play different sounds and control different sound parameters. Each instrument explores different parameters of music composition such as pitch, rhythm and timbre.

The exhibition is a part of VOICES OF UMEÅ - an artistic research project by swedish composer Anders Lind at the department of creative studies/ Umeå university/ Sweden.

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