CompArts Week 13
Weekly blog time — hello to anybody choosing to read this!
This week was about “Sensors and Sensing Practices”, and we were focusing on the topic of how sensors can be approached critically.
A point that Mattia was making that really made a lot of sense (and I apologise for my simplistic paraphrasing which is about to follow) was that as Sensor technology improves, the more things we can perceive in the world around us.
Hmm..as predicted, not the best paraphrasing. I sound like Karl Pilkington. The example he was using was CO2 (Citizen Sense AirKit CO2 Sensor pictured above). It’s something that exists all around us every day, and as it’s something that is beyond perception by our senses, it is invisible to us. However, now having technologies that can measure it, it adds an extra layer to our perceived reality.
Where this gets interesting for us as Computational Artists, is that when reality becomes computable, new sensors allow us to read/monitor/perceive things that were not there for us in the first place. And as soon as we can turn “things” into “input”, suddenly we can use/display/portray it in ways we choose.
Really cool stuff! And just infinite possibilities — especially as we went down the rabbit hole of “what ISN’T a sensor?”. We all tripped out on that for a bit.
Yeah it’s really interesting to see what people are doing in this field! Especially what we saw in the field of Climate Change. One of the things about having this technology at our finger tips and (relatively) affordable, is that we can do our own research if we so choose. However, this was a topic that divided the group: as artists, should we have to gather our own data? My take on this is that no, you don’t have to. If there are large data sets out there that have already been gathered that display what you want, then of course, no you don’t have to do the field grunt-work yourself. However it’s super important to not just believe what you’re being told, and to question the data and where it comes from. At least with the data you gather yourself you know the tools you used, and how you gathered it, and what biases were involved in gathering it etc etc. So no, I don’t think you don’t have to have sat on the side of Lewisham High Street holding a CO2 sensor once a week for a year to be able to display a trend if there is already a dataset from a reliable source that you can trust.
I’m also getting quite excited by my research project. I mentioned last week that I was thinking about “Drummers/Musicians that perform with audio-reactive visuals” so I started looking into the history of Audio-Reactive Visuals and the history of Music Visualisation. Reading about Music Visualisers took me right back to being at high school, and seeing the Winamp Media Player visualiser (which was dope af, no question) on the older kids laptops for the first time!
God, showing my age here. Not sure it’ll be this nostalgic/throwback vibes for anybody else on the course, but I’m definitely going to do something in this area. Just need to narrow (or expand…?) my field, and settle in on a clear idea. I’d love to make some visualisers, or some midi performance setups…or both…so I’m really not sure, but excited nonetheless! They’re some really clear cut artefacts (if they are the same definition as last term’s??)
Alright, ok. It’s late, and it’s a school night. So…laters x
