information aesthetics

a few years in the making, Yamaha's TENORI-ON is finally commercially available. this digital music instrument (or "visible music interface") consists of a unique touch-sensitive 16 x 16 color LED button matrix that provides a compelling visual experience in-sync with its musical performance.

now the question is: does beautiful music always correspond with stunning visual effects, & vice versa, do boring visuals leave behind arrhythmic tunes?

[link: yamaha.com]

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aesthetic & interface & multimodal . comments (8)

an audio-visual performance during which the heartbeats of 12 classical musicians & the artist duo Terminalbeach control a computer composition & visualization environment. the musical score is generated in real time by the heartbeats of the musicians. they read & play this score from a computer screen placed in front of them.

the musicians are equipped with ECG (electrocardiogram) sensors. a computer monitors & analyzes the state of these 12 hearts in real time. the acquired information is used to compose a musical score with the aid of computer software. it is a living score dependent on the state of the hearts.

see also pimp my heart car & heartbeat weblog & heartbeat bowl & heartbeat virtual world.

[link: eartchamberorchestra.org|via we-make-money-not-art.com]

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aesthetic & art & multimodal . comments (0)

a cocktail machine, connected to a television screen, that "visualizes" information via the taste composition of a real, drinkable cocktail. the installation creates a "infococktail" depending on real-time data. for instance, during a sports match or political elections a cocktail is made according to the score: a 1:3 soccer match results in a cocktail with equal ingredient proportions. milkshakes liquids are used to maintain an easily perceivable constellation of colors.

see also edible interfaces.

[link: fh-wuerzburg.de & youtube.com|thnkx Florian]

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art & infovis & multimodal . comments (1)

an incredible movie that symbolically portrays, in a "dynamic & joyful way", the linking together of amino-acids to form a protein. people represent molecules, who use trippy dances to animate the programming & the synthesis of proteins. each message unit of an RNA molecule is depicted by 3 adjacent people in a chain, brightly colored head balloons indicate the bases, energy is represented as a "puff of smoke".

needs to be watched to be believed. note the interesting music & lyrics.

see also life inside a cell & cell biology infographics & biomechanical pathways & balloon molecules.

[link: youtube.com]

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aesthetic & infographic & multimodal . comments (4)

a total of 857 songs that topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1958 & 2000, summarized as a sequence of 1 second time-lapsed versions for every week the original songs spent at No. 1. the result, called "Billboard," traverses 42 years of pop music history in 37 minutes, with songs appearing & disappearing every few seconds. some intriguing patterns emerge, such as the influence of the different Billboard ranking algorithms & the changing focus on music instruments over time.

see also sonified weather & city heat & heart songs.

[link: amazon.com|via wired.com]

aesthetic & multimodal . comments (0)

a hybrid visualization system that explores the dynamic & spatial qualities of smoke & light in relation to contemporary mobile SMS messaging technologies. a real-time smoke & light setup was developed to create a typographic ambient communication environment. local & remote (online) participants are invited to communicate with the project by sending SMS messages to 1 of 2 smoke signals located at the event, which are then visualized via the responsive nature of "ephemeral memory clouds"
see also data smoke & infernoptix pyrotechnic matrix.
[minimaforms.com & flickr.com|thnkx Stephen]

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aesthetic & multimodal & physical . comments (1)

a new method of searching music by its acoustic content & context, such as: lyrics, musical theme, melody, tempo, rhythm, & instrumentation. one visualization features data from a collection of about 5000 songs, & displays the "acoustic distance" among these songs of different genres as plotted on a 3D grid. songs that sound similar are positioned near to one another. the visualization can be used to browse a music collection as well as to generate playlists be finding a path through the music space.
see also visual jazz improvisation & music animation machine.
[sun.com|thnkx Paul]

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aesthetic & collection & multimodal . comments (1)

a data sonification (representation of data through sound) application that uses musical rules as a way to convey important time-varying information. iSIC (short for information music) is a monitoring system, sort of a baby sitter for big complex systems (e.g. a large network, a server farm or a nuclear facility).
the sonification lets operators mind the activities of systems through precisely mapped sounds which play pleasantly in the background. to achieve this the sounds are expressed as a musical paradigm. most people will assume that iSIC sounds like background music, however, a trained operator will know differently. the operators will be immediately alerted to changes in the system by changes in the music, even if they are not paying attention.
see also heart songs & city heat heart & cloud harp.
[soundtomind.com & soundtomind.com(mov)]

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aesthetic & infovis & multimodal . comments (1)