V.O.C.A.L. ARE YOU AFRAID OF BEING EXPOSED AS A MACHINE?
Interactive Installation, 2010

by Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth
in collaboration with Volker Böhm and Suzanne Zahnd

A project for the exhibition «Roboterträume» at Museum Tinguely and Kunsthaus Graz.
Museum Tinguely 9.6 – 12.9.2010, Vernissage: 8.6.2010, 18:30h
Kunsthaus Graz 9.10.2010 – 09.01.2011, Vernissage: 8.10.2010, 18:00h

Volker Böhm (conzept, Software) • Suzanne Zahnd (Text) • Michael Egger (technics) • David Johnson (Englisch Translation)
Jan Voellmy (Grafic) • Haimo Ganz (Woodworks) • Vera Bruggmann (Internship) • Conradin Döbeli (Mechanics)

Thanks to: Uwe Schüler • Christoph Frick • Kristin Vodusek • company Sigg • company ConZept • company Precide SA • V2_Lab – Artm Baguinski • Interinar Electronics – Miroslaw Wiater

Supported by:
Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt, Sitemapping/Mediaprojects – Bundesamt für Kultur, Museum Tinguely, Kunsthaus Graz

V.O.C.A.L.
Three stands are set up in a room, holding three oversized futuristic-looking headsets that conspicuously promise a listening experience. They seem to harbour life: they move, detecting the presence of a human intruder and turning towards him. These are the visual coordinates of a field experiment with which Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth attempt to set us to thinking about artificial intelligence.

Their artistic collaboration in the area of computer-generated art centres on sensual, performative installations that are often designed as interactive environments whose complexity and impact relies on the active participation and creative potential of the exhibition visitor. While the electronic works created by the artist duo, such as Instant City (2003–2006) and Trickstr (2007), are based on auditory as well as optical parameters, V.O.C.A.L., as a linguistic interaction between human and machine, is conceived as a purely acoustic thought experiment. Starting from the premise that humanoid robots, constructed after mechanistic models of human life, are already a thing of the past, and that the future belongs to disembodied information networks and communication systems – in the form of mega-machines that seem to be animated with soul – V.O.C.A.L. serves to visualise these new modes of communication.

What the viewer first perceives as mere technical equipment reveals itself at the moment of personal address to be, in fact, the physical expression of a technological being. For, although the synthetic quality of the headset voices leaves no doubt as to their artificial origin, Hauert and Reichmuth very deliberately rely on the emotional component of verbal communication, thus extending the functional spectrum of text-based dialogue systems, so-called chatbots, which operate through written language. The artists manage to draw the visitor into this machine-controlled dialogue by means of a simple question-and-answer game. Confronting a logical string of elementary questions on the (putative) fundamental differences between man and machine, the visitor is increasingly forced to rely on his own wits. Meanwhile, the lines of reasoning deployed by V.O.C.A.L. revolve around philosophically charged concepts such as consciousness, self, knowledge, thought, feeling, imagination, memory, soul and faith, which prove to be highly problematic when applied to automatons. While the visitor consequently struggles to come up with answers, the machine calls into question its own nature as a technological construct – serving to upgrade its own status: Do automatons equipped with artificial intelligence have a soul? Or are you perhaps afraid of being exposed as a machine? – In the face of such provocative questions, our conventional patterns of thought and attitudes are ultimately invalidated.

In their artistic experiment, inspired by the Turing Test (the first psychological imitation game based on the central question “Are machines able to think?”) Hauert and Reichmuth thus take a quite pragmatic approach to prompting us to reflect on our relationship to technology from new and unaccustomed perspectives. Moreover, this incidence of interaction within the realm of an electronic sensory experience, which is defined in the installation by the wireless range of the headphones, also makes tangible the current limits of artificial intelligence. And finally the visitor has a chance to witness how the linguistic exchange between human and machine still poses an unresolved problem, realising that speaking doesn’t necessarily mean understanding.

Manuela Kraft

The light-image-generators LUMOLEDs play on 4 x 4 pixels only to create an ever changing flow of patterns and forms. Chaotic formations alter with geometric and rythmic ones, blinking flashes and soft shades interfrere with each other. LUMOLED is the continuation of a extended development of pixel-light machines and in a playfull way draw upon image generators in the 60ties computer art.

VIDEO

TRiCKSTR – AN AUDiO-VISUAL ENVIRONMENT WITH ARTIFICAL PERSONALITY
Interactive Installation, 2007

by Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth in collaboration with Volker Böhm

«The trickster is an alchemist, a magician, creating realities in the duality of time and illusion.»

A massive presence is established in the space by the pixel light wall, a gigantic illuminator finely articulated through many individual lamp modules. Moving image patterns captivate the eye: rhythmical, abstract ornamentation dissolves into chaotic disorder; cycles oscillate producing pulsating light waves; and, color in gradients of sepia gives the impression that the physical materiality of the illuminator itself changes.

The impression of movement and dynamics is intensified by sound, which is so closely coupled with the image that it’s not possible to decipher whether the sound has evoked the image or vice versa. Whether through light or darkness, sound or silence the machine dynamically activates the space – including by means of a repeatedly-occurring voice!

… slightly irritating; the machine speaks; sound is now suddenly semantically loaded and also no longer seemingly bound to the moving light image. Trickstr’s recited leaps of thought concern a critic of the multiple worlds and levels out of which it has itself been constituted. Specific topics include the invention and developmental history of electricity, the computer, robots, and automats. The very concept of invention in itself is explored, as well as the definition of art since the 20th Century. In fact, Trickstr aims to question all formal systems in general and in particular their assumed irrefutability, as well as their fallibility. This fallibility is humorously underscored by Trickstr’s own frequent ‘error messages’. Paradoxes and contradictions within and between fields of thought are also pointed out. The voice is synthesized, trick and deceit, a faked simulation model of human communication.

We find ourselves seduced into anthropomorphizing this abstract environment. But just as a text has been formulated, it already starts to dissolve again into its individual tonal parts merging with the sound machine…..

The fact that the machine can also be influenced is discovered by the exhibition visitor when she or he enters the “action space,” a slightly raised stage located at some distance from the light wall.
By treading on this platform the player is confronted with her or his own pixilated image and an the sound of the acoustical Trickstr ‘trademark’ announces Trickstr’s awakening out of its self-absorbed mode. TRiCKSTR is ready to play!

Different modules trickily alternate back and forth: sometimes the machine reacts intensely and dynamically to our movements. Just the smallest shifts of weight lead to light storms and sound tempests; then again it demonstrates its sluggishness and forces us to move faster and faster; at times it is a game to be played; at others it is a sound landscape to be explored…

…and then once again the aim is to just dance, really dance, like Trickstr loves it!

The player alone can decide how long this interactive mode is to last; as soon as the stage is empty, Trickstr – after personally saying good-bye – once again falls back into its own regenerative state.

«Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.» – Wizard of Oz

VIDEO

Project-website

instant city, ein elektronischer musik bau spiel automat
Interactive Installation, 2003-2006

by Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth in collaboration with Volker Böhm

instant city is many things at the same time: an interactive computer game, an unpredictable music instrument, a theatrical social game, a psychological test, a light sculpture, a conversation space, an aesthetic testing field…
Yet even when the various aspects of instant city can be named, through its own art and means, this music building game automat brings a dynamic impulse into space that is new and whose true quality has over and over again approved.

One or more players at a table can create architecture using semi-transparent building blocks and in the process make different modular compositions audible.
Every performance is unique because the sequence, timing and combination possibilities are completely in the hands of the players!
For each game one composition is chosen.
To date, ten different musicians have each produced special compositions which serve as the basic music building kits of instant city.
Every game that is started here follows its own unique, unrepeatable course.
The playing and what the game triggers are completely different from person to person. Some would like to walk away after only a short time, overwhelmed by the limitless possibilities. Others would like to loose themselves in the game. Perhaps mathematically oriented players will try to proceed strategically through decoding reaction patterns. Esthetes might aim to create especially elegant constructions – and allowing the musical effect to retreat into the background. Musically inclined players might try to coax as much music as possible out of these “automatons”. The approaches to the game and the possible outcomes are limitless.

This music building game automat gains a further dimension as more players gather around the table. Inevitably a dialogue situation develops, the action on the table transforms itself into a reaction to what the others do. Although there isn’t actually a possibility to play against one another, still aesthetic differences can become visible on the game board in the same way as the
different personality structures do. Suddenly there could be leaders who want to build up high – or saboteur whose structural intention is to disrupt or destroy. The music suddenly plays the role of a commentator or also a referee, who through sounds remarks upon the single acts.

With instant city an “instrument” has been created that can enliven a space and the events in it on a variety of levels.

VIDEO

Project-Website

The lumograph consists of four illuminable light images, a computer and steering software. Each individual light image contains 4 x 4, i.e., 16 light fields, as well as the steering electronics, thereby providing a total of 64 light fields that can each be individually steered.
The composition with the 4 light images can be put together to accommodate the surroundings or, as we prefer to combine them; as four individual images, but also as a large one.

Even though each light image is limited to 16 „pixels“, still an enormous number of possibilities of combinations of quick-to-read images are produced for the eye. Accelerated by the factors of time and rhythm, thereby the most differing sequences are created to be perceived as a play between image and movement.

Programmed algorithms flow over the lighted surfaces. Various generators of random are available to us as creative means, as well as the possibility to run short or long image sequences, i.e., small „films.“ The appeal of this light image creation lies in the combination of these two possibilities. Pre-determined courses of movement are deflected and made strange through the random generators and are continuously transferred into new, surprising sequences of images making static images suddenly become alive before they take their usual position.

Our interest lies in the search for new means of composition that go beyond pure pre-deterministically designed sequences without, however, seeming to be arbitrary.

Software-developement by Volker Boehm
VIDEO

by Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth in collaboration with Volker Böhm

“soundlounge” means a performance as well as a living picture enabling a member of the audience to enter. Two soundpilots will invite one guest each onto a flying sofa that has been hung into a room and will lead him/her to virtual worlds, the journey taking about 15 minutes. Preferably, this performance ought to take place at an event such as a festival, an exhibition, a party (chill-out area), etc.

«The art of couch coaching means to seduce a person in public to open himself/herself to an intimate experience. His/her mind will be enraptured in order for him/her to lose control over himself/herself -just a little bit though. This is catching!» Statement Lisa Rosen

«The futuristic design of the soundlounge and the used low-tech tools induce something that reaches beyond logical understanding. This lack of understanding about what is real and what is not can only be resolved by taking a journey into any affair’s cyberspace.» Statement Boes Spademan.

The soundlounge consists of a 3-seat sofa that hangs from one point in a room. With this suspension the sofa may be turned, swung or tilted. All three seats are equipped with a headset each (microphone and head phones). On the left and right hand sides there are remote controls (interface) of the sound equipment (computer) as well as several tools for entertainment.

Software-developement by Volker Boehm

VIDEO

Kunst Am Bau, Wettbewerb Kunstkredit Basel, 2008
Neubau Zentrale Informatik-Dienststelle (ZID)

_10_BIT_DATAFLOW Jurybericht der Kunstkredit Kommission Basel Stadt:

Das Projekt von Sibylle Hauert und Daniel Reichmuth heisst „_10_BIT_DATAFLOW“, womit die gängige Einheit einer minimalen Datenmenge bezeichnet wird. Diese Datennorm wird durch eine transparente Säule aus 1024 leuchtfähigen und transparenten Plexiglasplättchen dargestellt und soll die Relationen der unendlich erscheinenden Zahlendimensionen, die in der ZID zusammenfliessen, visuell erfahrbar machen. Die filigrane und transparente Lichtskulptur erstreckt sich pfeilergleich vom Boden des Erdgeschosses bis zur Decke des ersten Geschosses und erscheint als freigelegte Arterie eines digitalen Organismus.
Durch eine Steuersoftware wird das dreidimensionale Display derart in Bewegung gesetzt, dass die unfassbaren Zahlengrössen in Form von Rhythmen und Proportionen zwischen dem einzelnen Leuchtfeld und der gesamten Säule sichtbar werden.
Die Jury ist von der künstlerischen Form und inhaltlichen Absicht des Projekts überzeugt.
Hauert und Reichmuth haben ein eindrückliches Mittel gefunden, um gleichzeitig die „umwerfende“ Wucht der unvorstellbaren Datenmengen und deren Labilität und Fragilität darzustellen.

Das Projekt wird zur Ausführung empfohlen und ein Beitrag von CHF 100‘000
ausdem Baukredit gesprochen unter Vorbehalt der Kreditbewilligung
des Bauprojektes durch den Grossen Rat des Kantons Basel-Stadt.

DATAFLOW Projekt Dossier PDF