gravity | density

(2019)

Jesse Allison - interaction design, distributed web audio

Anthony T. Marasco - cyber-hacked instruments, composition, web audio

gravity | density is a work for cyber-hacked devices and Web Audio applications. Our goal is to develop systems that merge repurposed and hacked pieces of hardware into the networked world of web art. While the electronic sophistication of mobile devices and the flexibility of web applications allow artists to create immerse audiovisual environments without the use of traditional music hardware, we believe that digital artists should not cast aside the tools of the past, but rather find new and creative ways of modifying them so that they can inform the ways in which we explore and create with new digital, web-based tools. Through these new hybrid systems, we can both embrace the limitations and push the boundaries of any hardware we use for the purpose of creating collaborative sonic environments.

In gravity | density, we begin by manipulating fixed-audio sources (comprised of NASA archival audio and original music by Anthony T. Marasco) through the performance of cyber-hacked CD players. The sonic results of this mangled audio is sampled and then distributed to the audience's mobile devices in both passive and interactive manners. Passive distributions allow us to create intricately-spatialized rhythmic interplay between the glitching CD players and the blanket of overlapping samples dispersed throughout the networked audience. Active distributions allow the audience to join in our performance; by choosing small portions of the audio sent to them and sending these selected samples back to us, we string this audio together and feed it into a cyber-controlled distortion pedal before sending it back to the audience for more manipulation. This results in overlapping cycles of control and audio generation between performer, audience, network, and machine.

More information can be found at http://gravity.emdm.io/