Live Interfaces Journal

Computational Art, Dematerialisation and Embodiment

Miguel Carvalhais — 2023-12-07

Computational art often explores dematerialisation and immateriality through works that are more grounded on information and causal processes than on formal features or physical materials. Digital computation is substrate independent and so too tend to be those artworks that centre their aesthetic experience on computation. These artworks share several traits with conceptual art, one of them being the challenging of traditional notions of objecthood. Dematerialisation is therefore a recurring strategy in computational art; however, this paper will argue that the hermeneutical processes triggered by computational artworks conversely lead to an ultimate embodiment of artworks, not in physical artefacts, computers, or computational systems, but rather on the readers’ own minds and in processes that are developed from and by the artworks themselves.

Resonant Embodiments: Listening to the Transcultural Body

Michelle Lewis-King — 2023-12-07

‘Qicapes 氣穴音景 (2022-) and Pulse Project (2011-2017) are cross-disciplinary research series exploring sound, embodiment, medicine, and cross-cultural science. These projects reimagine East Asian medicine in digital performance, crafting immersive audio environments connecting bodies and surroundings. Qiscapes investigate qi 氣 within the body using the ‘acupunctosonocope’, amplifying acupuncture and detecting ‘qi’ flow. It evidences qi, which is thought not to exist. Pulse Project creates sonic interfaces, translating Chinese pulse diagnosis and acupuncture point location practices into immersive ‘qi’ soundscapes, revealing the Chinese medicine body in all. These interfaces are developed to measure quantum entanglements in individuals and their environments. Through traversing art and medicine, these projects present a cosmological model of body-lifeworld relationship beyond the biomedical model.’

Synthetic Images: Data-based Aesthetics

Rosemary Lee — 2023-12-07

This essay examines how data-based practices contribute to new perspectives on the empirical value of images. Recent methods employing machine learning enable visualisations to be produced based on the large-scale analysis of data but that are detached from direct sensorial observation, subverting the forms of visual objectivity traditionally associated with technical and scientific methods of image-making. This research aims to develop insights into the forms of visual knowledge that these methods may give rise to, as well as facilitating critical discourse on the grounding of visual practices in relation to technical and scientific methods.

Creating Music Scores Live Through Interacting with a Character-level Text Generator

Alexandros Drymonitis — 2023-12-07

LiveLily is a live sequencing and live scoring system through live coding with a subset of the Lilypond language, a textual language for Western music engraving. Being a simple yet versatile language, Lilypond provides a high level of expressiveness in the resulting music score. LiveLily can either be used as a live scoring system with acoustic instruments, or a live sequencer to control audio software. The expressiveness provided by the Lilypond language contain information on notation, dynamics, articulation, and arbitrary text. By using a textual language for the score or the sequencer, it is possible to use a character-level AI text generator to produce melodic lines based on a corpus containing LiveLily sessions. During a live coding session, the text generator is seeded with input by the live coder and sends melodic patterns for the music ensemble it is trained on. The live coder can decide whether they will use these suggestions intact, edit them, or discard them.