BitAgent: Sound Sculpture

Sound Sculpture is an experiment with the virtual Bit Agent.
BitAgent Live is what I propose for the Eyebeam project.

c o n c e p t

The central theme of sound sculpture is a synthesis of questions that inevitably emerge when architecture and sound share a context: the creation of permanent forms through transient sounds and the deconstruction of time through space and form. These questions came about in my own dialogue and search for form and expression, architectural structure in sound, while on the other hand I sought to find ways to give tangible shape to sound. Using a similar system of real time parametric modeling , the sound sculptures are a virtual, 3D manipulation of BitAgent one of the first screen based experiments in testing the algorithm for the parametric modeling.

Implemented as a live 3D visualization the soundsculpture listens and only generates when it is fed a live musical performance or pre determined sound file. The transformations are fluid, continuous or brush and expressive, a performance that leaves its mark on the viewer and then then melts and disappears. In the end, the soundsculpture is frozen, as a series of numbers saved in a database, a sculptural record of sound manifested over time.

t e c h n i c a l // o v e r v i e w

Sound sculpture is a 3D visualization of a nurbs surface generated in realtime by sound input. The Max/MSP/Jitter programming language is used to compose the sound and generate the parametric 3D points that in turn place the nurbs shapes.

Sound Sculpture was created by Dana Karwas and Liubo Borissov


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b i t a g e n t s: local + global

The increased presence and prominence of new media in the context of art justifies a separate study of the forms that arise at the intersection of the two fields. I will regard such generalized entities as BitAgents, existing in their own right, avoiding hierarchies of cause and effect, concept and application. I will follow a unified eclectic approach towards the study of BitAgents, combining theory and practice. I believe that the rapid development of new technologies and quickly shifting cultural conditions necessitate such a phenomenological approach of conceptualizing and realizing ideas in tandem to ensure relevance and impact. To this end, I will use the Max/MSP/Jitter environment, a flexible versatile interactive visual programming framework enabling rapid prototyping of ideas and integratingrich media applications, traditional visualization and production software, as well as generic and custom-built hardware and electronics. The technical core of the experiments will be realized through case studies and examples, a genealogy of BitAgents, techniques of morphogenesis and transformation.

BitAgent Local focuses on creating immediate, local intersections between new media and art. Topics include real-time production and manipulation of two, three and four-dimentional media, interactions with responsive living and environmental systems.

BitAgent Global addresses large scale organization and networked aspects of local BitAgents, examined in the context of global information space and its intersections with physical and social space.

f u r t h e r // d e v e l o p m e n t // f a b r i c a t i o n //
n e t w o r k i n g // p e r m o r m a n c e

BitAgent Live: A programmable, responsive kinetic sculpture. The BitAgent Live exists both in virtual and physical public space. It interacts and responds to the stimuli from the environments virtual and real agents. It is in a true sense an entity with memory, logic, and kinetic response. The BitAgent Live learns and evolves over time through interactions conscious or ambient, with audience, composers, live data streams and surveillance observations. Ultimately the bit BitAgent Live is developing an internal representation of the outside world that evokes, defines, and perpetuates its existence.

Built as a moving sculptural structure, BitAgent Live is implemented through an IR surveillance system streamed into a custom-built software for analysis and visualization. The active space of the installation is broken into a grid, in which the system continuously estimates and identifies as many separate elements as possible, from clusters of people to individual gestures. Each element, its shape, size and quality of movement is associated with growth algorithms translated onto the structure of BitAgent Live. Participants not only determine the overall shape and organization of the BitAgent, but as they interact with each other, their corresponding physical structures merge, link and transform responsively. The interaction with the system is identifiable but not obvious, direct but subtle and complex. Furthermore, periodically data provocateurs, data harvests and generative search quearies from BitAgent Global, emerge and push the system out of its ambient state, radically transforming the structure, like natural elements passing through the city.

Fabrication of the BitAgent Live: A social sculpture constructed an adventure into moving skins and changing parametric points the BitAgent Live would be built as a dynamic system of moving elements. (a robot) A meta structure would be installed around the sculpture to controll the parametric points with motors and tesselation areas created by thin wire. A custom software system created in Max/MSP/Jitter would be manipulating the data it receives in many forms such as sound, crowd movement, data provocateurs, and translating it to fluid or harsh changes at the points. This custom software will allow the BitAgent Live to respond and create a dialogue with those who are visiting it. The initial material of the BitAgent would be fabricated out Ionic plasma speakers which are also the skin. The relative size of the Bit Agent would be site specific to the room or gallery and would require a ceiling height of 9 feet and space to walk around the sculpture. The rough imagined dimensions would be around six feet high and three feet wide with a threshold of about two feet in all directions allowing for the transformation of the moving parametric points to expand or contract the skin. The meta structure can exist as a system of lightweight high tensile aluminum to support the structure internally and house the robotic moving joints and parts.

Networking to other physical devices, software and hardware platforms: As a networked system of data, each movement of the BitAgent Live will be populated into a MySql database. The BitAgent Live will have a memory of the movements that it went through and can be further programmed to replay, combine, mix, remix, and compare its data and self organize to create an internal system of self generation. With the database filled with movement, a live web version of the BitAgent Live can be viewed online and users can login to program the bitagent, or even upload their own songs to be played through the BitAgent live at the installation or on the website. Guest composers could be invited program and perform the BitAgent Live.

c o l l a b o r a t i o n s

BitAgent Live is not only a kinetic physical construction but it also is a platform for collaboration. The core of the BitAgent Live consists of appropriating available collaborative teams, technologies and tools for the needs of a free-form project such as an interactive performance, architectural form, or reactive creature. WIth an open source software and dynamic structure the BitAgent Live can serve as a great experimental testing ground for anyone interested in bridging the relationship between the physical social space of the BitAgent Live and its information space counterpart. Collaborations are encouraged and will only add layers to the density of of use, testing, and feedback.

b i t a g e n t // s o c i a l // c u l t u r e

The potential of BitAgent Live is two fold. On one hand the custom software is generating a moving sculputral installation which is translating real-time data of the surrounding environment, sonic and social, and embedded data which is harvested from the web. Information sent for analysis is either human triggered by composition, movement, and change, or hidden within the surveillance systems of IR cameras, web parsing, and news seraching. The analysis of this information is translated as manipulations of the parametric points changing over time are stored and logged in a database for further use. This creates a looping system of environment, social engagement, physical form, technology, and information space.

On the other hand the BitAgent Live becomes a creature of its own when it begins to self organize and feed from past, current, and future predictions constructed by data analysis, data harvesting, and rapid media prototyping. This will result in a unique manifestation of movement and chance. Users of the BitAgent Live either online or at the site will have the opportunity to not only manipulate it at that moment but contribute to its future self generation. After time the BitAgent will have an enormous collection of its past states and can almost serve the community as a physical memory of a specific moment in time. BitAgent Live's database will be searchable and users can request past states of transformation, previous guest composers who programmed it, and past web present events such as news or important dates. Again these searches can be viewed on site at the installation of the physical moving form or on the web as a virutal sculpture of the moving Bit Agent Live.

r e f e r e n c e s // i n s p i r a t i o n

Constant's New Babylon
The Philips Pavillion by LeCorbusier and Xenakis
Herbert Brun Mutatis Mutandis 12, 32, 37, 35
Eric Singer and the Lemur Robots Ballet Mecanique
Nox Architecture Son-O-House
Michael Joaquin Grey Recovery: Vivid Coma Color
Paul Kaiser, Marc Downie, and Shelley Eshkar Enlightenment