Sound: Behind The Language, Media and Desire

By: Vincentius 'venzha' Christiawan

My work is based on my personal experiences. But, my personal experiences could be considered as part of our collective experience. My works uses sound as one of its primary elements. Audio/sound refer to an abstract level. As human beings, we have one sensitive tool in our body, and this is the ear. We are often touched by sound, coming from natural or digital sources. We usually relate more to the “words culture” than to the “sound culture”. Sound itself has an independent life.  That is why I am interested to explore it. The possibilities can explore the connection between sounds and between the levels of consciousness and unconsciousness. My work is based on my personal experiences, and I want to share a nuance from this exploration. That could be your experience, everybody’s experience. I believe art could view reality in its different sides. Therefore, through the sound I explore, I could share “something” behind the language, to open our sense of humanity.

Keywords: Art, New Media, Technology, Sound, Internet, Culture, Velocity, Humanity, Society

Technology : The system of tools and techniques by means of which people relate to their environment and secure their survival.
 (Rubin, Arnold, Art as technology, Hillcrest Press, 1989, Technology: Rubin’s definition,  17, 184)

The rapid improvement will always undergo to the velocity between technology improvement and cultural value in society. The similarity that become the parameter is the result of that combination that touch to the whole its image life. Referring to that, it is important to learn the characteristic and the substance of the technology in order to understand its position and its activity.
Many scientists in their field has created an important thing dealing with appreciation and the inventions that has change people point of view toward many things including art and technology / new media art. The improvement of internet technology and its supporting element are one of the most significant element to answer many human needed of the information flow and communication. The easiness which is resulted bring us to the certain structure where support the value of 'that velocity' 

What is required to access this technology? Nearly every new computer on the market, Windows-based PC or Macintosh, has enough power to play multimedia files, combined with specialized software, which comes bundled with the system or available free of charge on the Web. The only hardware you may wish to add is memory, or RAM, the more the better, as multimedia applications become more sophisticated and memory hungry.
(Kettlewell, Ben, Electronic Music Pioneers, Pro Music Press, 2002, The internet, 238, 286)

Human in this earth always hunger of velocity to fulfill their need. Actually, art is the important key word in the improvement of technology. How is it explained? As the technology, art is the thought referring to the essence of human needed. It was the basic human needed of the aesthetic value and appreciation value. These combinations resulted that 'art' is a fundamental soul experience of everyone. Inevitably, deliberate or not.    

How is 'sound'?

Once more, by the times goes the development of human thought toward technology, the development of internet brings many opinion and supposition that internet refer to ‘medium’ rather than a ‘technology’. It would be better if we interpose the internet as the media that could be a bridge and answer the happening challenge.    

For most people, the Internet is more of a medium than a technology. Moreover, it is a shape-shifting, borderless medium firmly in the hands of ordinary citizens bent on turning it to extraordinary ends. Revolution has become commonplace in our vocabulary, and so the real thing is often hard to recognize. But the stories in this book and in its companion website make it clear that nothing less is afoot on the internet today. From Inuit children doing their homework to Benedictine monks selling monastic fruitcake, this is the stuff of deep innovation and change. This is the domain of real people discovering new possibilities on the frontiers of cyberspace.
(Smolan, Rick, 24 hour in cyberspace, Que, Macmillan, 1996, Preface : Saffo, Paul, 17, 224)

Let’s describe the development of art nowadays by supposition of some new media art experts. It must be the long debate about it. The analogy is that the position of ‘new media art’ actually is the bridge and the place in order to do the activities and art work using the new media referring to the creative improvement and the innovation using aesthetic point of view. What is the aesthetic point of view? It was very abstract! What is the parameter?
Sound is one of the improving images of ‘new media art’. It will undergo many branches in creating, form, and of course the innovation. Here, we will try to feel how actually the value of human needed in aesthetic point of view will emerge in various creating character / creating process. Whether we will get the form of new awareness or we will find the other energy? 
Or it will be the opposite of negative energy? We have to give the fundamental in the project or work by the systematic and logical pattern. Moreover, in this structure we will always encounter to the many situation where the branch of knowledge and the pattern that seldom very difficult to understand. Back to the discussion about the improvement of technology, there are so many person who has translated to the form of new art or certain innovation in this sound area. Who are they? Creator?, scientist?, artist?, musician?, or who else? I think asking about the identity is not relevant anymore to enter to this study.

We should imagine what will surprise us next. I’m not in the game of the expected. I like the idea of the dematerialization of identity, and I think it’s inevitable now. As people communicate more n more frequently and globally, they can invent new personas and identities – probably the first impulse is to imagine celebrity as being one of the great big deities of our time. But if celebrity is about mass media and mass contact, then at some point an anti-celebrity status and a way of behaving that destroys the celebrity, destroy the ego and the personality and identity until we do not exist, become revolutionary. Self-immolation.
(Shapiro, Peter, Modulation, A History of Electronic Music, Throbbing Words on Sound, Caipirinha, 2000, Interview : P-Orridge, Genesis, 65, 255)

New Language

Sound is a form of character by a million probabilities of genre and the way to enjoy. It provides many places and facilities for human being to choose and appreciate where appropriate to the level of human is needed and appreciation each person. Here is the form that is more than a “language”. It will be very difficult to understand the “language” which is daily language. This writing cannot explain what is “behind the language”. For instance, when we hear a certain ‘sound’ together in a room, in the same level, in the same importance so there will be a new language that can be simultaneously reveal that ‘sound’ have a certain power. When there is a power then the group of individual actually has a same sense to enjoy.   

Technology will make or break us
Alienation produces eccentrics or revolutionaries
You must remember you have freedom of choice
(Jenny Holzer)
(Gestalten Verlag, Die, localizer 1.0, Die Gestalten & Chromapark, 1995, Prolog : Robert Klanten)

Why we interested to learn? Why we interested to make? Why we interested to analyze? Why we interested to combine? and why we interested to create? Why we interested to presented? The answer was in ‘the power’ itself. Desire will bring all the need and our dream to the one point where it had to reach. That point is the place where we can stand with the proud and the satisfied value. In this theme, ‘sound’ will be the pole as the substantial character by the whole supporting elements.

Today, the technologies of deception are developing more rapidly than the technologies of verification. Which mean we can use a television camera, plus special effects, plus computer, etc. to falsify reality so perfectly that no body can tell the difference. And the consequence of that eventually could be a society in which no body believes, everybody knows that seeing is not believing, and nobody believes anything. With the exception of a small minority that decides to believe one thing fanatically. And that’s a dangerous social/cultural situation.
One of the consequences of living through a period like this, which is in fact a revolutionary period, is that the entire structure of society and the processes of change become nonlinear.
(Shapiro, Peter, Modulation, A History of Electronic Music, Throbbing Words on Sound, Caipirinha, 2000, Epilogue : Interview, Alvin Toffler,  213, 255)

It is merely to remind when the ear snatches the certain ‘sound’ signal. What is actually happening? There are so many interrelations in the process of hearing, feeling, and even judging the certain form of ‘sound’. It is not merely the role of the ear. ‘Sound’ which is coming will produce the wave energy then sound wave enter to the tympanic membrane (ear drum), wave energy will change to the mechanic energy which is change then by Cochlea become an electric energy and continue by Auditory Nerves to the brain.
Herewith the brain by the whole ability and its miracle analyze and detected the source of the sound. One important thing in this point is in the “perception” toward one of the form of the sound sources or that “sound”. “Perception” is the important requirement for the human in using the “new language” as the language that can feel the essence itself.

In various work of sound project that we produce (www.natural-fiber.com), it start from various possibilities soul experience and our daily as social creature. Human is in certain structure in certain culture. What is the background of emerging the ‘desire’?
According to the explanation and the description above, it is difficult to explain when the work are resulted (in the certain period after a work has to be done) or the ‘energy’ and ‘new language’ will felt when the working process of the work presented so that there are so many interaction. Here ‘sense of humanity’ happened and in this point a ‘new awareness’ will always produced…

Play a sound,
Play it for so long,
Until you feel that you should stop
Or
Play a vibration in the rhythm of the universe,
Play a vibration in the rhythm of dreaming.
(Prendergast, Mark, The Ambient Century, from mahler to trance-the evolution of sound in the electronic age, Bloomsbury, 2000, Book One, The Electronic Landscape, 1, 500)

Venzha,
Yogyakarta, June 8, 2006
the house of natural fiber
yogyakarta new media art laboratory
www.natural-fiber.com

In the corner of a dark streets in front a club that play drum n bass, a boy standing in the corner, Mohawk hair, full tattoos, nails all over his belt and a dirty face. He smile at me, the smile look innocent, and friendly eyes.
“Hi”
“Hi”
Then he gave me a bottle of cheap vodka, ask me to drink. With a little doubt I drink it and damn! the taste is horrible, he get a bigger smile and laugh so hard. And so I laugh. We are laughing together. Then he said in a whisper “ keep the faith buddy ”.
I said “ Let’s go inside, I treat you a beer”
Then we go in to the club. Look at us, me an Mtv generation, hedonism adore, party goers, wearing a reebok shoes, nike bags, levis pants, donna karan perfume, distro shirt, zara skirt walking with a punkers that never going to the mall, singing an anarchist song, and anti capitalism ( o, really ? ). What a contrast world.
In the club, a lot of people there, some looks like me, some  looks similar with that boy, the rest are some gay couples, grunge, gothic, etc. The music is change into gothic punk and we melting in to the crowd all night, getting warm with glasses of beers,  yelling and sweat. Back at three o’clock in the morning, promise to meet again for the next gigs.

At home, with a bad headache because of too much drink I try to sleep, but I just remember a word that punk boy told me, keep the faith. So try to looking for what kind of faith that I have hold on to? In this confusion of political suck issues, do I have believe in my president? Or do I have believe in Mr.‘right’ Bush? In this globalization era do I have believe in McDonald rather than rice. Do I still believe in god than Mtv ? Then I fall asleep.

It is always a same question for us , the youth. The pathology of the new kids is familiar: impatience, distrust of authority, malaise, and a wistful, ironic sense of longing for defunct ideals and lost horizon. A man and the environments gets a sign from a symbolic construction. We find ourselves at the turning point in the history of our civilizations. The more we try to hold on  to the past attitudes, traditions or practices, whether they be political, commercial, artistic, or whatever, the more complicated and less manageable we find our lives.
At such a point in time, we must rethink the role of individual in this global society and must encourage new social experiments which try to establish creative, positive approaches to this brave  new world of us.
After the second war the youth of the world find a better language to express their feeling ‘Rock n Roll’. It was much more than a form music. A product of the childhood of the technological  revolution. It is the world’s youth; who always fought for the wars without having any say in this decisions. With an ever expanding network of media possibilities, this new generation grabbed onto the gold key offered to build a new and idealistic ideology which spread like wildfire throughout the world, a new frontier, culminating no less an office than the president of United States. Rock ‘n’ Roll was the language and the spirit, social reform was the massage. Since Rock ’n’ Roll, the foundation of music has been social relevance. From civil rights to the environment, from anti war movement to the awareness of global communication power, the hippies passed this legacy to the punks, who took the battle to the streets, fighting for the working class, for jobs, for the homeless for food. Rock ‘n’ roll and punk cultures routinely considered as losers and dropouts from society, they were derided because their lifestyle did not match current standards or codes of acceptability.
In here in 2005, we talk the same language with our own way. Trying to celebrate our youth with the same rituals. Rock n roll and punk culture transforming in to techno and club culture. The future of the world belong to us, it is our duty to live in, to take care of it.  The rebel nation still continue, fighting for peace and justice for today and tomorrow.
There we are punk, rock ‘n’ roll, techno, grunge, alternative, party slave, kids of all nation have only one word to say : peace

Play this game right ! No difference between black and white
The difference is between young and old...
Turn it up and see what happens
The game is drawing to a close
so it looks as good a time as any to ask the final question :
What does the future hold for us ?
Bring it down to ask for the coming back ...
if the kids are united they've got 80,000 in the bank
and they don't know how to live !
I used to work in a club where they never came to dance ... fuckthem up!
Kids are united and they will never be divided !
( atari teenage riot )

ira,
Yogyakarta, 2005
the house of natural fiber
yogyakarta new media art laboratory
www.natural-fiber.com

By: Venzha/Hasan Murod

Abstact:
Sonification is a new technique to represent data by means of sound. There’s many success stories of sonification  in many fields of application to improve human’s understanding of the environment. In the art field, sonification need to be explored  as an artwork creation tool. Movement sonification is the main exploration in  my work titled Artificial Intelligence Part I, presented in Jogja Biennale 2005, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In my exploration, sonification can be used as a creation tool to produce an artwork that has an interactivity with the audiens and the environment, thus help us to get better understanding of our environment.  

Introduction
Sonification is a new technique to represent data by means of sound, forms an interesting alternative to visualization techniques. Sonification is defined as the use of nonspeech audio to convey information. More specifically, sonification is the transformation of data relations into perceived relations in an acoustic signal for the purposes of facilitating communication or interpretation . By its very nature, sonification is interdisciplinary, integrating concepts from human perception, acoustics, design, the arts, and engineering.

Naturally sonic environment gives us better understanding of our whole environment. Our sonic perception of a bumping car give us an understanding about how hard the bumping happens, and it’s more sensible than our visual perception. With sonification,  we can hear anything that usually doesn’t generate sound, thus give us better understanding of our environment. 

Movement Sonification, An Exploration of Sonification as An Artwork Creation Tool

In the technical field, sonification is still considered to be in it's infancy. In the art field, sonification need to be explored  as an artwork creation tool. Movement sonification is the main exploration in  my work titled Artificial Intelligence Part I, presented in Jogja Biennale 2005, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The goal of the work was to build a preliminary artwork that can be advanced to produce a more intelligent artwork in the future. This preliminary artwork consist of hardware and software for capturing and processing a real-time image and generating a visual and sonic artwork based on the  image.

The Mechanism
The implementation of the work is done using a web camera, a laptop, a multimedia projector, and a sound system as the hardware.

The camera is used to capture the image of the workspace in real-time. By analyzing  frame-by-frame of the images, the movement’s features of the captured object is then extracted. The features consist of the  position, direction, and the velocity of the moving object. Other image’s fatures  that are not movement-related such as maximum intensity position  and “black area”-to-“white area” ratio also extracted. The datas of extracted features is then fed into sound generator to produce the sonic artwork. The sound generator consist of twelve stereo oscillators. The frequency, volume, phase, and the  balance of each  oscillator is controlled by the data from extracted features. The volume of the whole oscillator is controlled by movement detection mechanism. If there is no movement of the object in the image,  the volume of the whole oscillator is then faded out in a few seconds.

The Aesthetic Aspect

The pitch generated by each of twelve oscillator directly and independently follow the audiens movement’s feature, thus the melody flow continuously, not matched to a predetermined scale or pattern. Their combination form either consonant or dissonant harmonics, giving a rich experiences to the audiens. A various timbre is created by complex interaction in the mixing of the oscillators’s output, including superposition of two adjacent frequency that generate beat modulation. Some oscillators are programmed to generate a tone with a random frequency to improve the dynamic behavior. Because the randomness is controlled by the speed of movement, the audiens can feel a more dynamic “composition” as they move faster. The control of the balance and phase of each oscillator improves audiens’s experience of moving in a space dimension.

The Benefit to The Human Understanding of The Environment

In the technical field, sonification gain a great  success in improving understanding of our environment. In that field, sonification is very helpful in understanding many real entity existing in our environment. My exploration in the art field show that movement sonification can also improve audiens’s understanding of some abstract entity existing in the environment of the workspace. The interactivity between the work, audiens, and the environment gives a chance to the audiens to feel their movement, their acceleration, their position on the workspace,  and their interaction with other audiens by means of sound. In physics, the audiens may have learnt the abstract concepts of movement, acceleration,  and position, but here, with movement sonification, the audiens are invited to feel them like  percepting  real entities.

Conclusion and The Future Work
In the technical field, sonification has been success to improve our understanding of our environment, and in the art field, especially in my exploration, sonification can be used as a creation tool to produce an artwork that has an interactivity with the audiens and the environment, thus help us to get better understanding of our environment.

Our future work will focus on advancing the work to produce more intelligent artwork by implementing artificial intelligences  in the image processing, sound generation, and the visual generation. By means of artificial intelligence, we hope that the artwork will have more environment-aware and audiens-aware, giving more interactivity between the artwork, audiens, and the environment.

References

• Kramer, Gegory, et al, 1997, Sonification Report: Status of the Field and Research Agenda.  (http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/References/nsf.html).
• Lunney, D., & Morrison, R. (1990). High technology laboratory aids for visually handicapped chemistry students. Journal of Chemistry Education 58, 228.