Multimedia

Category Archives: Multimedia

Alpha-ville’s magazine of multimedia, interactive, digital and hybrid art.

Alpha-podcast presents Brooklyn-based label Scissor & Thread

26/03/2014

Our featured Alpha-ville podcast is from Brooklyn-based imprint Scissor & Thread, put together by founders Francis Harris and Anthony Collins.

Francis Harris describes the label as “cut from a different cloth than your average dance imprint” and their recent releases define this approach. The sound of S&T is uniquely characterised by complex elements of deep house, ethereal sounds that borrow from vintage records and soundtracks that often make their way into the productions and mixes for just a few seconds. In a word, the sound is exploratory. “We don’t subscribe to any model, as models by nature are c...

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329 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, toluene tank by Zimoun

22/08/2013

Pick of the Week #99

This week’s pick is “329 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, toluene tank”, a big scale sound installation by talented Swiss artist Zimoun.

Zimoun has completed one of his most ambitious projects to date in an abandoned 1950s tank situated in Dottikon, a small town in the region of Aargau, Switzerland. Using 329 DC – motors and cotton balls attached to the tank walls, the permanent installation creates a powerful contrast between sound and architecture.‘329’ is a collaborative project from Zimoun Studio, architect Hannes Zweifel and many others including Bruno Bachmann, Hans Jörg Baum...

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Project Sky+ by Karolina Sobecka

18/07/2013

Pick of the Week #98

This week’s pick is Project Sky+ by Karolina Sobecka, a geoengineering and philosophical project about collecting and drinking the water from clouds. Described as a ‘personal device for Thinking Like a Cloud’, Sobecka attaches mesh wings to a weather balloon which collects water into a container. These cloud samples are analyzed for microorganisms and ingested by the experimental subject.

Sobecka is an artist from Poland who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and CalArts. Her work seeks to “engage public spaces and explore our interactions with the world”.(Dream The En...

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Pixflow #2 by LAb[au]

3/07/2013

Pick of the Week #97

This week’s pick is Pixflow #2, a software artwork by LAb[au] and part of the exhibition ‘Noise’ at the 55th Venice Biennale. The exhibition was curated by Alessandro Carrer and Bruno Barsanti with the contribution of Marisa Vescovo and texts by Boris Brollo along with De Arte, non-profit association.

LAb[au] is a trio of artists Manuel Abendroth, Jerome Decock and Els Vermang who founded the collective in Brussels in 1997. Their oeuvre displays themes as colour, light, sound and motion and is characterized by space, concept and process. LAb[au]’s experimental and innovative art pract...

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Not Even Love Will Tear Us Apart by Lia

19/06/2013

Pick of the Week #96

“Not Even Love Will Tear Us Apart is a generative artwork composed by digital artist Lia. The film is composed of continuously evolving forms that, through rotation, movement and mirroring, suggest the symbol of love: the heart. As within relationships between lovers, permanent change happens in the details while the overall aesthetic remains the same. Each pair of rotating shapes remain connected at a shared point, even as the forces implied by their movements threaten to tear them apart. New shapes overlay the old structures, adding ever-increasing depth to the resulting image, and bui...

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Alpha-podcast presents TRISTEN

16/06/2013

For this new installment of the Alpha-ville podcast series, our guest editor Luis Munoz had the privilege of speaking to the man behind the forward thinking AIM label and former contributor of the WHITE label family. This passionate producer goes by the name Tristen.

Before we start, could you please introduce yourself? What have you been up to these past couple of months?

Hey, my name is Tristen. I’m from Berlin. My week is spent between working at Native Instrument, studying and playing some gigs. In addition to that, I run the label Aim and I’m also a member of the WHITE label family.

We love your sound. ...

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Grapheme by Robert Seidel

5/06/2013

Pick of the Week #95

This week’s pick is Grapheme by Robert Seidel, a laser cut projection sculpture and permanent installation at Museum Wiesbaden.

Seidel is a Berlin based artist working in the mediums of experimental film, video projection and installation. Similar to his recent work ‘Tearing Shadows’ and ‘Black Mirror’, Grapheme is an exploration into creating new and abstract worlds that exist in 3D, allowing the viewer to be truly immersed.

Seidel takes elements from around him such as sketches, paintings, photos, x-rays, scientific data and simulations, digital artifacts or motion capture data, and ...

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I Love Your Work by Jonathan Harris

22/05/2013

Pick of the Week #94

This week’s pick is Jonathan Harris’ ‘I Love Your Work’, an interactive environment and documentary about lesbian pornography.

Jonathan Harris is an artist and computer scientist. Known most famously for co-creating ‘We Feel Fine’, he makes projects that re-imagine how humans relate to technology and to each other.

Harris’ goal in his work is to “make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we’re all feeling and looking for.” - TED

Harris joined each of the nine women whose lives he chose to...

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Memento Mori by Martin Bircher

15/05/2013

Pick of the Week #93

This week’s pick is Memento Mori by Martin Bircher, a sculptural installation about technology and the passage of time.

Bircher is an artist and lecturer from Switzerland. He received a degree in Fine Arts with specialization in Media Art in 2003 from the University of Applied Sciences Northwest Switzerland. In 2006 he migrated to Kouvola, Finland, where he works as a media artist and lecturer for Digital Media. He occasionally teaches workshops in the fields of physical computing and electronic media in art. Since last Summer Bircher is working only as a part time lecturer and as full...

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Look Up: 100 Year Starship Screensaver by Robert Hodgin

9/05/2013

Pick of the Week #92

This week’s pick is ‘Look up’, a cosmic screensaver created by Robert Hodgin for the Barbarian Group and 100 Year Starship.

Hodgin is an code artist living in Brooklyn. He is a founding partner of the Barbarian Group and heads up its west coast office. He graduated in 1998 with a degree in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Hodgin’s work ranges from simple 2D data visualizations to immersive 3D terrain simulations. He works in Java, Processing, C++, Cinder, OpenGL, and GLSL and has spoken at Eyeo Festival, Tedx, FlashForward, FITC, Flash on the Beach, OFFF, and FlashBe...

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Playing With Fire by Alexandra Levasseur

1/05/2013

Pick of the Week #91

This week’s pick is Playing With Fire, an animation by illustrator Alexanda Levasseur.

Levasseur Lives and works in Montreal, Qc, Canada. She studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design at University of Costa Rica, a Postgraduate in Creative Illustration and Visual Communication at EINA School of Art and Design, Barcelona, Spain and is Currently studying Major in Film Animation at Concordia University, Montreal.

The film is an experimental animation and extension of the illustrator’s 2D work in acrylic and pencil.

“I have been experimenting with animation a bit before, but it is my mos...

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Alpha-podcast presents London-based label Astro:dynamics

26/04/2013

To celebrate our new Alpha-podcast series we present the very promising London-based label Astro:Dynamics. Our editor Luis Munoz spoke to Luke Owen – the man behind the label. Founded in 2010 during his last year of university with a 16-track compilation record produced by his close friends Lukid, BNJMN, Tapes and Mike Slott.

During the time Luis spent chatting to Luke, they spoke about the inspirational time for small record labels, the effect London has had on him creatively, the challenges he has faced being in charge of a label and of course the podcast and images he has put together for us.

To start thin...

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The Defector Interactive by Fathom Film Group

24/04/2013

Pick of the Week #90

This week’s pick is ‘The Defector Interactive’, an online cinematic experience about escaping North Korea.

“The Defector Interactive is a cinematic journey into what it’s like to be a North Korean who tries to escape. It begins inside North Korea and allows the user to take a POV journey across the Tumen River into China and South-East Asia. There are decision-making points and 360° interactive locations with hotspots which the user can explore for more video, information, stills.” (FFG)

Made by Ann Shin and Fathom Film group with digital agency Jam3 and Psyop, the online web doc com...

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Digital Drawings by Shantell Martin

17/04/2013

Pick of the week #89

This week we introduce you to the work of Shantell Martin, an illustrator and pioneer of digital drawing.

“Artist Shantell Martin collaborates with her surroundings, translating into glyphs, lines, recurring characters, and words the newspaper someone is reading across the way, say, or a pair of shoes walking by, a thought she had, the sky, something overheard. Her universe is flexible, multi-dimensional, surreal, a constellation of small observations that spill from one medium to the next.”

Martin studied at Central St Martins in London and went on to live in Japan and New York....

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Data Cuisine by Prozessagenten

10/04/2013

Pick of the Week #88

Data Cuisine is a data visualisation project that uses the medium of food to express data. They ran a workshop at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki and also presented at Resonate.

Taste of migration, Eleonora Ivanova. Each non-Finnish nationality is represented by a stripe of typical food – from Salmon for the Swedish to rice for the Chinese. The amount of food on the plate corresponds to the number of people from that nationality who live in Finland.

Using food as a means for data expression, Data Cuisine takes the medium of dataviz and subverts it, turning it into a sensory exp...

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Visualising Fukushima by Interactive Things

3/04/2013

Pick of the Week #87

A web publication about the effects following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Interactive Things are a user experience & data visualization studio based in Zurich. Their past work includes the World Inequality Database on Education and Geo-Bee Rankings for National Geographic. They also run Datavisualization.ch, a news and knowledge resource for data visualisation and infographics.

The project is a web publication written in German featuring interviews, photographs and data visualisations explaining radiation exposure, distribution and evacuations following the disaster.

For the...

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RGB XYZ by David O’Reilly

27/03/2013

Pick of the Week #86

Do you remember watching David O’Reilly’s ‘The External World‘ at Alpha-ville Fest 2011? It was an utterly captivating, disruptive experience. This week, we pick-up his first short film from 2007 that was uploaded online just a week ago.

David O’Reilly is an Irish film maker & writer based in Los Angeles. He uses glitch effects and 3D animation, deconstructing and simplifying to create ultra-brash and intense experiences. His films have travelled across the globe to many festivals and have had a big online impact.

RGB XYZ is a digital journey into a psychedelic world of colour and nois...

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Gravity by Sergio Calderon and FIELD

20/03/2013

Pick of the Week #85

Gravity is Sergio Calderón’s chapter of Energy Flow, a collaborative app by FIELD for iOS and android. The non-linear film experience is unique every time it is played, and explores the complexity of how things are connected in our lives today.

Digital Art Studio FIELD created Energy Flow with the help of the Creators Project, bringing in artists Calderón, Maxim Meshkov, Andreas Nicolas Fischer and sound by David Kamp. The app aims to translate real-life events and processes into digital paintings in motion, exploring the “fragile equilibrium between physical, political, and cultural te...

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Visualizing Open Processing by Sinan Ascioglu

13/03/2013

Pick of the Week #84

Visualizing Open Processing is Sinan Ascioglu’s interactive data visualization of the activity of users on OpenProcessing.org in 2012.

Ascioglu is a User Experience and Interaction Designer from America. He launched OpenProcessing almost 5 years ago as a forum for users of Processing, an open source programming language and environment. Users can share and improve their sketches while tapping in to the community.

The visualisation of the Open Processing community demonstrates the intricate web of interaction and movements – split into commenting, following, tweaking or favoriting – of...

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Starry Night

12/03/2013

PETROS VRELLIS

Digital is like magic, may your dreams come true. In this project Petros Vrellis has animated the classic Van Gogh “Starry Night”, bringing it to life through interaction using openframeworks and with a dramatic soundtrack.

The App is available for iPad 2 here for 1.99.

(Source: Creative Applications)

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Wide Sky by Marcus Eckert

6/03/2013

Pick of the Week #83

This week’s pick is Wide Sky by Marcus Eckhert, an iphone game app.

Marcus Eckert is a freelance iOS Developer and Motion Designer. He describes Wide Sky as “A game and experiment in design”. The objective in Wide Sky is to bounce and swing your hedgehog from clouds using a rope, in order to to smash orbs hanging in the sky. As you progress in the game, your hedgehog gains new powers and new challenges to complete.

“I wanted the experience to go beyond just playing a game… It might even be an experiment and then a game.

It’s a game but it was also my playground for a year t...

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Carp and Seagull

5/03/2013

EVAN BOHEM

An interactive film that explores narrative and interactive spaces. A man encounters the spiritual world after spending his days fishing the waters near his village seeking out a quiet, structured life.

Directed by Evan Boehm at Nexus Interactive Arts, the film doesn’t need to be downloaded but it can be viewed from a browser. It brings together narrative, modeling, animation and it has an original score and sound design by Plaid.

GO TO THE FILM.

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Energy Flow

5/03/2013

FIELD

Energy Flow is a non-linear interactive experience that tells 10 stories from a thousand perspectives. The project was created by FIELD with the support of Creators Project and is available to download fron the Apple store and the Google Play store.

The app explores the flow of energies in our world and it includes a bespoke algorithmic system of interlinking the stories into different film experiences.

From a quick dream rush to a meditative impression, each iteration presents a different abstract narrative full of crosslinks and connotations; reflecting that there is never just one perspective on our...

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Kingyo Kingdom by Cohen Van Balen

27/02/2013

Pick of the Week #82

This week’s pick is Cohen Van Balen’s film ‘Kingyo Kingdom‘, a documentary on the selective breeding of Ranchu Fish.

Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen are London based Designers and Artists that work together under the name Cohen Van Balen. Their experimental approach to art which sits between science, technology and design, leads them to beautiful and thought provoking projects that ”test the ethical parameters of biological design”.(Transformism exhibition)

Ranchu fish, ”King of the goldfish”, are a variety of Goldfish from Japan that are selectively bred for their shape, and are ...

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data.scan [nº1-9] by Ryoji Ikeda

20/02/2013

Pick of the Week #81

This week’s pick is data.scan [nº1-9] by Ryoji Ikeda, an audiovisual installation currently exhibiting at MU in Eindhoven.

Born in 1966 in Gifu, Japan, Ikeda lives and works in Paris, France.

His work is described as focusing on “the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light, by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.” Ikeda website

Often using frequencies at the edge of human hea...

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Adam Martinakis

13/02/2013

Pick of the Week #80

‘Last Kiss’

Born in Lubań, Poland, in 1972, Adam Martinakis studied at T.E.I. Of Athens, Faculty of Interior Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Industrial Design, and since 2000 has been working in the Digital Arts. He has also taught Digital Graphics & Arts, Interior Design and Ceramic Design, and is a member of CultureInside, slashTHREE and Art.lica international art collectives.

Martinakis’ range of Computer-Generated visual media works with themes surrounding the organic and the digital, often exploring the human form by deconstructing it to vein-like layers. Described as a mixture...

Also posted in Pick of the week | Tagged 3D, digital art, surreal | Comments closed