Atmosphonia (2019)

Installation featuring 3,000 loudspeakers each of which plays a different sound channel. Each speaker lights up when it is playing back controlled by a central computer.

As you walk around this auditorium, you can hear wind, then water, fire, ice, over 200 types of insects, over 300 types of birds, bells, bombs and so on, from an extensive archive of diverse field recordings. Please take your time to explore up and down the aisles, take a seat and feel free to enter the rows that have no speakers. You can also view Atmosphonia from the runway and the stage

Babbage Nanopamphlets (2015)

An artwork of a glass bottle filled with bubbling water

Two million specks of gold were engraved using nanotechnology techniques at Cornell University. Around 50,000 copies were sprayed in the original exhibition room so they remained floating around in the air, potentially inhaled by the public.

These engravings are 150 atoms thick and are biologically inert so pose no health risk. The rest of the pamphlets are shown suspended in water in a vial with a magnetic stirrer.

The text engraved onto the gold leaflets is an excerpt from “On the permanent Impression of our Words and Actions on the Globe we inhabit”, chapter IX of Charles Babbage’s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. A first edition of the book is shown here along with electron microscope imagery of the nano-pamphlets.

Banderoles (2021)

A person in a dark room looks at a lit up screen at UNC2021

Banderoles (2021) Inspired by Samuel Beckett's play "Not I", this interactive artwork tracks, displays and records the visitor's mouth, using voice recognition to transcribe whatever is said onto a suspended typographical environment.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Two people look at a cabinet in an exhibition space

A. Telegraph key, XIX Century. The Invention of the electric telegraph in 1840 made possible to gather weather information from multiple distant locations, allowing to create the first weather maps.

B. Amazon Echo Smart Speaker cut in half by water jet, revealing a seven-piece networked microphone array that is always on.

C. Anemometer Wind Flow Meter in Orr & Lockett Box, Short & Mason London (late 19c).

D. Sandhurst Boxwood Protractor (c1850) by Elliot, Strand, London.

E. Occupation of Garzweiler coal mine in Germany, June 2019. Activists are protesting plans to destroy ancient Hambach Forest to expand the mine. Garzweiller produces 35 million tons of coal per year. Videos from @parkpilger and @joanielemercier.

F. Taxidermied canary in antique bird cage.

G. Stanley London 2453 Brass Surveying Aneroid Barometer w/Magnifier (c1850)

H. Digital camera (2016) runs OpenCV to detect your face using a deep neural network machine learning model (DNN ML). Another DNN ML then extracts 120 features, which are reduced to 2 by a tSNE algorithm so they can be placed in a comparative grid.

I. Early Victorian hand painted Magic Lantern Chromatrope Slide by W.E.& F. Newton of Fleet Street (1852). Babbage was a member of a ghost society for the study of the supernatural and enjoyed phantasmagoria exhibitions.

J. Holy Bible, Oxford University Press (1841). Key sacred texts have been atmospherically “revealed”, for example Torah to Moses, Psalms to David, Evangel to the Evangelists and the Quran to Muhammad.

K. Custom-made atmospheric CO2 measurement device by Stephan Schulz. High CO2 concentrations indoors indicate stagnant air where airborne virus transmission such as Covid-19 is more likely."

Cloud Display (2019)

Text display with 1,600 ultrasonic atomizers, controlled by voice recognition system. This display writes any words spoken into an intercom using pure water vapour. The atomizers are typically used for cold water humidifiers. The artwork uses AI speech to text algorithms to transcribe whatever is being said, from single words to full sentences.

Flag Beacon (2019)

Robotic light beacon, controlled by voice root mean square power. A point of light rotates around the room in exactly one minute. The intensity of the dot is inversely proportional to the volume of the participant’s voice. After releasing the intercom button an echo is heard from past recordings.

Last Breath (2012)

An artwork showing a mechanical artwork

Mechanical respirator circulating the breath of composer Pauline Oliveros. A brown paper bag inflates and deflates 10,000 times a day, the normal respiratory frequency for an adult at rest. The bag contains the breath of Avant Garde American composer Pauline Oliveros, developer of the concept of “Deep Listening”. Oliveros died on Nov 24, 2016 but her breath continues circulating in this biometric portrait.

Vocal Folds (2019)

Laryngoscopic video, LED display, computer, speakers, oil drums. Five Northern actors agreed to read Babbage’s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise during an endoscopic filming. A camera was introduced into their nose, reaching their vocal folds and cords. The films show the exact mechanism by which our body actuates the atmosphere to create speech.

Voice Tank (2019)

Ripple tank controlled by polyphonic pitch detection actuation. The voices of two participants who speak into the intercoms are analyzed and converted into notes hammered by motorized components. The resulting waves interact creating unique patterns.

Volute 1 (2016)

A mechanical artwork

Speech bubble, printed in steel, capturing the air turbulence ejected as a sentence is spoken. Made with laser tomography scans (shown in video), photogrammetry and 3D printing. The phrase chosen was “Au clair de la lune” — the first ever human voice recorded by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1860, seventeen years before Edison’s.

Weather Vanes (2019)

Pneumatic turbulence generator controlled by Mel-frequency cepstrum voice analysis. This piece features 99 brass arrows inspired by anemometers and weather vanes, the devices used to measure wind speed and direction. Here the live voices control miniature computerized fans that create turbulence. When seen from above the table looks like a map of wind barbs or vectors.

The Atmospheres

Airborne Projection (2013)

Projections of artwork in black and white

Heat map shadow play, controlling Navier-Stokes fluid-dynamics algorithm. Photo by Jason Lock

Clouds I (2019)

A projection of clouds

Artificial vapour waves.

Clouds II (2019)

Artificial vapour waves.

Clouds III (2019)

Projection of clouds

Artificial vapour waves.

Recognition (2018)

Projections of faces

Machine-learning face recognition system classifies the viewer in relation to a database of people who have seen the work in the past.

Stand in (2019)

Drone footage of a chamber

Drone video sequence from Atmospheric Memory Chamber.

Text Stream (2019)

white letters projected onto a black background

The full text of the collected works of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace turned into a stream of letters.

Text Stream II (2019)

Atmostpheric Memory at the Manchester International Festival 2019

The full text of the collected works of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace turned into a stream of letters. Photo by Olivier Groulx

Voice Tank (2019)

Live video stream from Voice Tank.

Vanishing Points (2018)

A room with gridlines superimposed on all walls

Superposition of perspective grids. Photo by Olivier Groulx

Weather Vanes (2019)

Weather Vanes

Live video stream from Weather Vanes.

Zoom Pavilion (2015)

People viewing projections of faces on the walls of a gallery space

Surveillance piece using movement and face detection, records visitors’ spatial relationship within the exhibition space.

Collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko. Photo by Olivier Groulx

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