Following her visit to the NEM Summit in France last October, Kate Halsall, Lecturer in Music Performance and Audio Arts has begun a research project and has just finished recording an App in the Foundry (@Foundry) at the School of Music and Fine Art, called ‘Hear the City’.
This is part of an Artist in Residency programme with Stromatolite, a partner in the ICT and Art Connect project, funded by the European Commission FP7 Programme, for the purpose of fostering collaboration between ICT and Art. Hear the City takes random snapshots of social activity from specific localities through the conversion of Twitter feeds into musical notation, creating a reflection on both the endless invisible streams of metadata and the visible comments we throw out into the world.
Incorporating projections showing the origins of the Tweets and feeds, real time Instagram pictures and synthesised text to note sounds, the installation is accompanied by a live recital of the translated incoming texts by concert pianist Kate Halsall. Shifting effortlessly between the poignant and the humourous, this unique combination of analogue and digital, live performance and generative music, shines a compelling spotlight onto our social world.
This project begun at the NEM Summit in 2013 and the results will be premiered on 12th May at the Sigma Orionis event, The ICT and Art Connect at the European Commission in Brussels, May11-12.
Further Reading…
Connecting Art and Technology: European trends and forward looking
A FET-ART panel will present the major findings of the project, delivering recommendations to the European Commission and outlining new research venues and best practices. The panel is made of: Marta Arniani (Sigma Orionis); Camille Baker (Brunel University); Lucas Evers (Waag Society); Svetlana Kondakova (Black Cube Collective); Michela Magas (Stromatolite). The session is moderated by Roger Torrenti.