Volumes: Sound and Space :: Diane Willow

Event X, Friday October 6th
Conferences Volumes : space and sound

The topic of the panel, Volumes: Sound and Space, inspired me to explore the kinesthetic mode that I use to develop ideas into new work and how this frequently leads me to sound as a synthesizing element that fully engages people in experience.

With a process familiar to many contemporary artists, I am drawn to hybrid zones and trans-disciplinary approaches. One of the forms that I have been exploring over the past fifteen years is a modality that I define broadly as dynamic, socially engaged spaces for contemplation. They take varied forms as interactive installations, environments of experience, and responsive, sculpted contexts. These spaces are frequently ephemeral, inspired by natural phenomena, shaped with technology and activated by participation.

Generally they evolve through a process that is guided by what I can best describe as a kind of kinesthetic mirror. This mirroring synchs tacit knowledge and inner knowing with an externalized environment of experience that resonates with this kinesthetic sense when fully realized.

Leave-ings is a series of installations that I began during my residency at the MIT Media Lab. On windy, mid-winter days in Cambridge, I walked by oak trees with leaves that clung, relentlessly to the branches, ever present until they were seemingly pushed off their stems by the vigor of emerging spring green leaves. It was the rustling sound that captivated me, that brought these enduring leaves to my attention. They created an atmosphere, engulfing with their vibrations. Each time my path approached these oak trees I felt that their sound shifted my state of mind, in a transcendent, energizing way. When I recall that experience I can imagine the windborne rustling of the tree leaves as rattles that are atmospheric in scale.

I began playing with dried leaves, vibrating motors, sensors and microcontrollers and this evolved into a medium with sound and energy that I could tune. When my felt knowledge resonated with the soundings developed for Leave-ings, my kinesthetic mirror confirmed that this was now a match, ready as an environment or experience to be tuned by the people who would visit these ephemeral installations. I shaped the sound and space with suspended bamboo structures, each a carrier for lines of copper wire that held row upon row of these crispy, deep crimson leaves. Extended lengths of bamboo with whisker like sensors read shifts in light or pressure and signaled the vibrating motors to set the leaves in motion as people approached. The presence of a series of these leaf carriers invited meandering and choreographed movement through the space. After making a several variations of these installations, my fantasy is to make a dynamic ceiling – to frame the space overhead, completely with leaves. I imagine this as a room for dance for improvisational sound scapes, and a source of refreshment as the volumes of sound and space shift.

Currently I am working with bioluminescence. I am mesmerized by the glow of these aquatic algae. I find this living light electrifying and the fluid motion of the water that activates this light ceaselessly compelling. When I have encountered it on moonless nights at the ocean's edge, I have seen the incoming and receding waves glisten with luminescent seaweed imbued with light from the bioluminescent algae it harbors. Because each, single-cell, plankton is sensitive to the changes in pressure caused by even subtle movements of the water, I began to conceive of these bioluminescent plankton as an interactive, kinetic and fluid media.

Their glow is of often-called “living light”. This awareness of the emitted light as bio, as alive, is what I want to heighten. I am in process with this fluid media of bioluminescence, exploring gestures that express empathy and compassion. In my process, I refer to this growing gesture language to guide the development of a range of interactive, tangible interfaces that people sense, hold, gesture and move. Through their empathetic gestures, they move the water, which then activates and shapes the light, before coming full circle as the glowing light engages the people who are activating the waters.

As a current installation in process, Light Sensitive, will be an environment comprised of interactive vessels, fountains and pools of seawater inhabited by microscopic bioluminescent algae. It is envisioned as reconfigurable, ephemeral space for contemplation. The bioluminescent plankton have day and night cycles that can be tuned. Their night can coincide with our day, their daytime with our night. Like plants, they require sunlight to produce their own food. In the installation, the “sunlight” is provided by full spectrum lights timed for one half of the diurnal cycle. While prototyping some of these installation elements, people interacted with the water and light while spontaneously and very naturally sharing stories of their experiences with light phenomena. This temporary installation confirmed that this contemplative experience readily extends into the social realm.

This medium also focuses on vibration, vibration expressed as light. The vibration moves in the water rather than in the air and this movement causes the plankton to emit light. Underwater sound creates vibration as well. Perhaps musical patterns of vibration create light patterns? Along with the motivation of embodying empathy and compassion while activating the light, I have begun to think about music composed for the plankton, with their responses translated or displayed as light. Parameters for this composition involve identifying harmonious and constructive rather than destructive frequencies and circumscribing the compositional space in this way. Pauline Oliveros is intrigued by the idea of composing and playing for the plankton and we are in dialogue about this possibility. I imagine the sound in this underwater space being one that we can listen into with subtle hydrophones that enhance our sensory engagement with another species.

These fluid volumes of air and water are among the divergent spaces that I shape with interactive sound and whole body, whole person participation. I look forward to future sites, future media and explorations of new modalities for engaging people in these experiences.

Biography

Diane Willow is an artist and researcher who is drawn to hybrid zones and trans-disciplinary approaches. Currently a professor in the new media area of Time & Interactivity within the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, her interests range from sound art and tangible media to interactive installation and responsive environments. Her explorations with sound have been focused on a modality broadly defined as dynamic, socially engaged spaces for contemplation. The interplay of nature, technology and community, the experience of multi-sensory engagement and her ongoing reflections on cultural dialogues embedded within interactive art have informed her work in varied contexts including her appointment as artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab.