ABSTRACT. Web Box: Surveillance and Manipulation in the Digital Age Trans-interactive installation for physical and web environments

In our society, an illusory freedom conceals pervasive surveillance, with socioeconomic mechanisms monitoring our actions and subtly guiding our behavior. This control is exerted through advanced computer systems, especially the Web, which functions as a complex device integrating linguistic and nonlinguistic elements, regulations, and institutions to maintain capitalist power dynamics. This installation challenges the digital control system by interweaving the real and virtual worlds. At the center of the exhibition is a glowing, resonant black box, a monolithic symbol of mystery and hidden knowledge. This monolith, an archetype of the digital deity, emanates its own light and sound by absorbing and interpreting data from a dedicated web page, accessible via a QR code, allowing visitors to interact with its virtual counterpart. In turn, the monolith reacts by altering the screens of smartphones connected to the webpage, highlighting the often invisible processes of digital surveillance and social manipulation. Through this interaction, the installation reveals how simple actions generate information streams, highlighting the pervasive and opaque nature of digital control in contemporary society. By exploring Csound and its Web engine, we want to offer a trans-interactive experience that evokes awe and unease, prompting reflection on the influence of the digital world on our real relationships. The monolith and its digital black box counterpart symbolize the hidden forces that shape our destinies, encouraging visitors to critically confront the pervasive surveillance of contemporary society.

ABSTRACT. There are several online applications that allow users to explore pitch lattices. However, few haptic interfaces for this purpose exist. The polyomino interface for pitch lattices aims to bridge this gap by providing a grid of fiducial markers representing pitches that can be played by covering them with geometric shapes (polyominoes). Moving, rotating and exchanging these pieces allows users to explore pitch relations in an intuitive way.

ABSTRACT. This is a performance of Frippertronics, a genre of improvised electronic music started by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno in their recording No Pussyfooting of 1973. Since then, it became one a standard mode of working for Fripp and it has influenced many musicians over the years. The essence of the genre is the use of some form of a long delay line with feedback, to accummulate in layers the live performance gestures. Fripp tends to favour the use of modal melodic fragments that can be easily recognised, building interlocking patterns, but of course this is only one of the many ways to approach it. Originally, the delay lines were established using two reel-to-reel recorders, where the tape would be fed from one to the other, the distance between the machines defining the delays. This gave a workable maximum delay of about seven seconds. Later, digital delay lines replaced these.

In my setup, I am using Csound to provide all the processing, which allows me to define as many delay lines with any useful length in any arrangement I want. The computing resources afforded by a desktop environment pose no restrictions to this, we much sooner reach the musically useful limits of the setup than the ones imposed by the system. To me, long delay lines are a complete different beast to the ordinary delays. It is possible to push the limits of stability much further into what engineers would class as not practicable, which is an interesting form of subversion of the norms.

From a musical performance perspective, we are also in a very unstable situation, which, as Fripp reflected on, is humbling for the musician. A false step and we can come crumbling down into disarray. Siting at the keyboard with no prior idea of what is going to ensue is also very perilous. We need to be in tune with the instrument and its interface, there is no hiding. This type of performance celebrates memory, new versus old, and, foremost, the concept of entropy - all things tend to decay after a while, and so do our musical gestures.