Meditation Technology [Installation]; 2011

Materials: Computer, sheet metal, wood, cables, piezo microphones, Pure Data software, speakers, audio.

This interactive installation piece creates an environment of relaxation, yet heightens awareness. The space is filled with the sound of prerecorded crystal crucibles being struck or rubbed, and participants experience the interplay of frequencies and beat patterns in the air as the sound slowly pans across four speakers in the corners of the room. Participants are invited to sit on four metal mats positioned in the four directions on the floor, each with a piezo microphone sending audio signal to a computer for processing. Through a custom software patch, the computer measures the amount of movement on the mats from the amplitude received, and based on the movement increases the spread of the bowls across the four speakers, or in cases of more disruptive movement, begins to distort the sounds. The participants quickly become aware of their movement. Even the smallest motions create changes in the ebb and flow of the bowls, and gives the participants audible feedback on their ability to focus or meditate.

A minimalist industrial and technological feeling is evoked in the use of bare metal, wood, and cables. There is no attempt at making these components hidden; they are given aesthetic consideration so that the piece may be understood as a technological system without its parts becoming a source of external distraction. Through the piece participants may begin to become comfortable with motionless listening in small groups with others. They will be working together to be still so that they may find a deeper place of thought, or travel through aural narratives while intensely focused. The conceptual framework behind this piece originated in my desire to create a piece of computer art that allowed for technology to partake, for better or for worse, in the building up of a collective awareness, and an enhanced ability to concentrate during the meditation process.

In this piece, the sounds are recorded from technological by-products of the Silicon industry. The ringing crucibles you hear, similar to crystal bowls, were used to forge microprocessors in California over 20 years ago.

Special thanks to Dan Lauter, Liz Phillips, Pall Thayer, and Seth Powsner.

Meditation Technology Crystal Bowl Mixdown by Max Lauter

Weather Balloon; 2011 

Video Documentation: 20:00, Excerpt 02:20

This piece is based on ‘Echo-Evolution’, originally shown at The Kitchen NYC in 1999, by artist and professor Liz Phillips. In this iteration of the installation, the video, projection, and sound was created by Max Lauter, as part of Liz Phillip’s Sound & Interactive Media course at SUNY Purchase College. It includes two projections fixed onto a weather balloon, which create a sort of 3-dimensional image inside the balloon. Sound of the video footage was processed and combined from multiple field recordings and played in sync with the projection in the space.

Watch the excerpt video:

All The Way Down; 2010

Materials: CRT television, video camera, tripod, small turtle ornament.

A camera captures a small turtle sculpture on the television screen and plays it back through the same screen creating a stagnant loop that appears like a spiral staircase. The effect is similar to a sort of reflecting pool, relating to notions of the metaphysical in technology and ideas of code all the way down, from websites to processors. The title takes it name from a myth that suggests the Earth sits on top of an elephant, which is on top of a turtle, which is supported by “turtles all the way down”.

Sisyphus; 2010

Materials: CRT television, video camera, tripod, metal step stool, delay pedal, contact microphone, small found rock.

Participants climb a step stool in order to look down into an upturned television where they encounter an image of themselves with a heavy rock on their back, while they hear the echo of their ascent through the speakers. The cyclical myths and narratives that this piece evokes call attention to the rhythm of ritualistic engagement with technologies, as well as the fictions of burden and purpose in constructing identity.

To the side of the television is a camera that is situated to capture the person on the top of the stool looking down from behind, which is a live feed played in the television screen. On top of the screen is a small but heavy rock which appears to be directly on the back of the participant on the screen when standing on the top step. As the participant climbs the step stool they hear their movement played through the speakers of the television with a delay filter captured by an unnoticeable contact microphone attached to the stool.

Bardo; 2010

Materials:  iMac G3 plastic housing, iMac G3 inner hardware, two video cameras, two projectors, iPod classic, iPod Dock, digital reproduction of a Tibetan painting portraying the myth of rebirth and judgement from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

This cacophony of technological objects comments on our relationship to technology, both mechanically and spiritually, an embodiment of the cyclical nature of its evolution in production and use. Only some elements are functional while others are not. It is displayed as a sort of exploded-view diagram of a computer, one whose parts you can touch. Two live camera feeds are projected through the housing of a defunct, but once state-of-the-art computer. From one side there is bright light that shines in the participants face in which you can see a newer technology, an iPod, displaying the painting of the Tibetan myth whose dim projection it faces on the dead CRT. Notions of judgement are invoked from the myth as they relate to the evolution and dissolution of different technologies, and how we interact with those we deem ‘dead’. The participant also becomes an object of judgement as they choose to either look into the dazzling light to see the clearest image on the iPod, or away from it to see the dimmer muted projection.

On one sculpture stands sit an iMac G3 CRT with all of its internal computer hardware and on another sits its plastic housing. Inside the plastic housing sits an iPod in a dock, displaying the Tibetan myth. On the CRT are two cameras that are oriented at the housing. Two projectors project the two live-feeds through the housing onto the CRT. One projection is of the housing onto the front of the CRT in similar scale, and the other is a close-up of the iPod screen, such that the painting appears to be on the CRT screen though it is off, and its unplugged power cable is visible. 

Interactive Silhouette [Installation]; 2010

Materials:  Video camera, dvd player, projector, pre-recorded video sequence, script (for participants)

This piece reflects on the flatness of the screen and the ambiguity of identity through the manipulation and distortion of the self through technologies. For this piece the prerecorded character is merged with the participant, and their engagement shows how in many ways our use of technology is a sort of performance. The resulting video is a simulacra, it is unclear who was the original performer, or who the performer was prior to their performance. To quote Sherry Turkle, “the objects on the screen have no simple physical referent. In this sense, life on the screen is without origins and foundation. It is a place where signs taken for reality may substitute for the real. Its aesthetic has to do with manipulation and recombination”.

Participants are given a script of basic actions that correspond with the actions of the prerecorded projected video silhouette. Participants engage in the actions with the silhouette in front of the projection creating a second silhouette. A camera is situated in a way that it captures only these two silhouettes, and re-projects them as one live video on an opposite wall.

TV Dinner [Installation]; 2010

Materials: CRT televisions, video camera, prerecorded video, chair.

A prerecorded video of the artist eating a TV dinner in front of a television. The participant can sit in front of one television and watch the video while simultaneously being captured and played on a television to their side. A sense of unease is felt from the seemingly personal nature of the video being watched, as well as the awkwardness of not being able to look directly at oneself in the live-feed because the angle of the television causes them to see only the side of their face. Participants are welcomed to eat their own meal while seated in front of the screens. 

Video: http://vimeo.com/4624677

Cake [photograph]; 2009

Materials: Large plasticware, handmade oscillator audio circuit, handmade strobe circuit, speaker.

This handmade instrument creates sound based on the amount of light that enters its sensors, as well as from input by buttons on the top of the housing. The entire instrument will flash light in a meter set by a potentiometer (knob). The result is an instrument that activates both aural and visual space, combining the a rhythmic experience of a room through light with the potentially melodious by usually atonal electronic sounds of the oscillators.