Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- iwas17:petercourtemanche [2017/02/01 14:30] – created givanbela
+++ iwas17:petercourtemanche [2017/02/01 22:51] – givanbela
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ===== Peter Courtemanche, The absolute Value Of Noise: servers and networks as artworks. =====
+{{  weatherreports:AVN_video_still_12_Mar_2016.png?500|}}
 This is mostly personal thoughts and anecdotes. There are a few people I used to know who also produced network art using custom servers and electronics, but I don't really remember all the details.
@@ Line 102: / Line 104: @@
 For example - the average noise level in many cities is very high and yet people mostly ignore it. I did a collaborative piece in Bregenz in 1998. We had some speakers set up outside in a small square where there were restaurants all around. We would play sound-art mixes of odd piano music, Theremins, strange vocal pieces, etc. and the patrons and employees of the restaurants hated it. It drove them crazy and we kept turnning the volume more and more down. One Friday I loaded the computer system up with a bunch of samples for the "sound pool" (a piece of software we were using to create an endless sound collage). My intention was to run the sounds for a few hours and then change them to something pleasant for the weekend when we wouldn't be at the gallery to manage the sounds. In the end we had to leave early and the sounds I had loaded up ran all weekend. I was a bit terrified because I had loaded up a whole pile of aggravating tone generator sounds and imagined that the people in the square would be furious. But when we came back to the gallery Monday morning everyone was in very good spirits. They thought that our system had been off the entire weekend because all of the sounds had sounded like car alarms - a common sound that they simply blocked out of their awareness.
+[A note from Peter: ...the Soundpool - which was/is an amazing piece of software that was made by Winfried Ritsch (an artist who has done a lot of work with Kunstradio in Vienna). I never remember how to spell his name when I'm rambling, thus its omission from the interview. But if you can add a little credit in there where the Soundpool is mentioned that would be nice. He setup the Soundpool for a piece in Bregenz in 1998 and then he did another version of it for Sound Drifting at Ars Electronica in 1999. He was very generous with his software and the way that he made it available for many artists to use within these big collaborative streaming projects...]
 In my outdoor electronic works I always try to find some interesting phenomenon that's at the edge of people's awareness and then try to bring it to light - give it  voice and a presence. Thus the sentient electronic mushroom pieces (the one that measured man-made radiation and respond to it with noise like a geiger counter, or the one that was at TiK). I find that when you expose the plight of some elusive variety or insects, or the chemistry of plants, or the elecro-pollution that surrounds us it often draw people into a world that they would otherwise ignore. As long as the invisible world isn't too frightening, people will happily immerse themselves in the minutae of the moment.