ALMAT @ impuls - Workshop 2019 by Hanns Holger Rutz

Algorithms that Matter (ALMAT) focuses on the experimentation with algorithms and their embedding in sound works. Rather than conceiving algorithms as established building blocks or the a priori formalisation of a compositional idea, we look at them as performing entities whose consequences are irreducible to models. Algorithms “matter” in the sense that matter and meaning cannot be distinguished, neither can artists and their computational tools. Algorithms actively produce spaces and temporalities which become entangled with their physical embeddings. In 2019, we created a workshop within the impuls . 11th International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music, taking place in the Museum of Perception (MUWA) Graz, February 11–21, 2019. It focused on the development of a site-specific sound installation. The installation explored the interactions of algorithmic and physical spaces and their dynamic and mutable properties. Participants worked on the premise that spaces and our perception of them change depending on presence, absence, the movement of visitors, the time of the day, the rhythm of the surroundings as well as the sonic and algorithmic interventions we bring into them. The workshop sought to attract computer music practitioners, sound artists and composers by offering a platform for exchange and reflection about their personal approaches towards algorithmic experimentation. The participants were invited to develop their various approaches within an atmosphere of collaboration, where special emphasis was given to the translation of environmental data (such as sensor input from the surroundings and visitors) through computer music systems developed and assembled by the participants and tutors. The workshop was held with technical infrastructure provided by the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM), including an 48-channel sound system and a selection of sensors. The workshop ALMAT was developed by David Pirrò and Hanns Holger Rutz (both IEM Graz) and was held together with the special support by Robin Minard.

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meta: true
date: Feb-2019
event: impuls academy
place: muwa
keywords: [exhibition, sound art]
author: Luca Morino
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1. This installation deals with our perception of population behaviour. A honey bee usually lives for one to six months, while a beehive can live for decades. One may forget that a beehive is there – as it forms a soft, continuous background noise. Then one notices a single bee and suddenly, the activity of the hive comes back into focus.
  
  {origin: program notes, keywords: [_, population, bee, noise, focus, attention, perception]}

Luca Morino

Project proposal

 The project I would propose to ALMAT program is a sound installation named Stormi (Italian word for flocks of birds). The compositional idea is to create a dynamic system in which sounds are displaced in space. I imagine a synthetical meadow formed by a large amount speakers where sounds, frequencies, maybe fragments of already existent materials, are free to move around autonomously and constrained by very simple rules. These rules provide simple instructions to virtual sound sources about movements allowed or not, depending on some microphones that detect the acoustic state in the room. The aim is to create a complex correlations systems in which sounds escape each other, generating an autonomous evolution and particular movements across the space.

{origin: project proposal, function: intention, keywords: [_, flock, space, system, movement, autonomy]}

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