Art by the Byte

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir project, in which he creates a full-range choir from YouTube contributions of his fans, has gone through three iterations thus far. This one, which is the second of the three, is my personal favorite. Whitacre's asked his fans to record various parts of his piece, entitled Sleep. He expcted about 900 people to comply. The result was 1,752 unique performers (with over 2,000 individual recordings) uploading their parts to YouTube as a video response to Whitacre's original post. After months of arrangement, video composition, and rendering, the final video was made available and was an enormous success - and for good reason.

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There is no denying the sheer epic nature of this project. To see so very many people's faces, sitting in their homes around the globe, being virtually put in a magical galactic orchestra setting can really take one's breath away. This is telepresence on a mass scale - 2,000 people being in 2,000 different places and in one single place at the same time. Magnificent!

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This mesmerizing installation by artist Philipp Artus is one of my all-time favorite... things. Artus, who is studying at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, is laser-projecting a continuous video loop (created in Autodesk's Max program) on phosphorescent material wrapped around a column, which is why the snail leaves a trail after itself.

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This is Years, a simple but striking installation by Dutch new media artist Bartholomäus Traubeck. Traubeck used Arduino technology, Ableton Live, and wood craftsmanship to create a turntable that plays - believe it or not - slices of tree trunks, with their year rings as the music. A simple camera feeds the thickness, shape, and color of the rings into a computer, which generates piano music to match.

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Traubeck let the machine play a whole set of different woods, like pair and maple, and each of them has a distinct sound. The age of the tree also, naturally, contributes to the music that the wood produces, as well as various blemishes and imperfections in the slice. This is pure, nature-to-human transmodality in action, folks! 

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This brilliant piece of work is the latest in the National Film Board of Canada's (NFB) lengthening list of cutting-edge new media projects.

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Created and directed by husband-and-wife team Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes, this web-enhanced documentary 'film' explores the life of  a particular grizzly bear in Banff National Park, shown through extensive footage from trail cameras in the park, geolocation-enabled graphics (drawn from the GPS collar Bear 71 wore), and hordes of other data. Best of all, our guide through this vast, non-linear land of narrative is the bear herself, speaking in the first person.

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This is one of my absolute favorites ever. Immaterials was created by Oslo-based artists and designers Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen, and Einar Sneve Martinussen (the latter two now running a design studio called Voy). while studying at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. They achieved these incredible photographs by creating a large LED bar, linking its LEDs to the signal strength of WiFi reception at its location, and walking through an area while the LEDs flash. By capturing these walks through long-exposure photography, the immaterial landscapes of radio communication are revealed - a virtual skyline inside an actual city.

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This mindbogglingly impressive display of live motion tracking and projection mapping was created by Japanese media artist Daito Manabe, with Nosaj Thing providing the music. Nosaj Thing is known for his musical collaborations with interactive installation artists, many of which employ projection mapping and infra-red-based motion capture in their shows. Notice the combination of live, tracking-based visuals and pre-rendered visuals; there really is room for both styles in new media and especially in performance.

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Hello, fellow internet citizen!

This is Art by the Byte - the (new) new media art blog sponsored by York University's Digital Media Student Association and maintained by me, Assaf Gadot, currently in my 3rd year of the program. I will be posting about interesting and relevant art works in the fields of new media, computational art, data art, and the likes.

Through this blog, I hope to come across inspiring works and to relay information about them to you, the reader (and, most likely, Digital Media student). Even better would be if a conversation arises out of my posts; feel free to comment and suggest works (and other stuff) that you think is worth a look!