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Plasticity (an interactive audio visual installation)

Plasticity is an audio visual installation which investigates how a participant-driven, evolving musical instrument could be made from the rhythms of polychronisation. It was created by Matthias in collaboration with Jane Grant, Nick Ryan and Kin, and first installed at BFI Southbank, London (November 2011). Subsequent venues include the opening of the Google campus, London and HWK Institute for Advanced Study, Germany, and as screen documentation at Cheltenham Science Festival (all 2012). The installation includes 6 microphones and 16 speakers, each of which is coiled in LED ribbon. A computer model runs a network of artificial neurons and records the input sound made by visitors into the microphones, and retriggers sections of this sound when one of the neurons ‘fires’. The neuronal network is driven by a noisy signal keeping the system ‘buoyant’ and has an algorithmic ‘plasticity’ code, developed by Matthias, which changes network connection strengths according to causal firing between the neurons, mimicking simple ‘learning’. When the neurons ‘fire’, the corresponding LEDs also light up, causing cascades of firing events to create a scattering of light and recorded live sound which occur in polychronous groups (Izhikevich 2006) across the speaker network. The patterns of lights and sounds in Plasticity are linked to sensory perception and the collective dynamics of the spiking neurons, enabling robust rhythmic structures to develop across the installation. At the BFI Southbank, a live performative element was introduced in which the neurons also triggered elements of a choral piece of music written by Matthias for The Holst Singers. This subsequently formed a sound bed over which public participation could take place and which evolved on various timescales from seconds to hours. Project findings have been further disseminated via published conference papers (including ISEA Sydney, 2013) and a journal article in Leonardo (2013).