Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Plymouth
Plasticity - Plasticity is a discrete participatory sound and light artwork comprising 6 microphones and 16 speakers within one large room. Each speaker is coiled in LED ribbon.
Plasticity is a discrete participatory sound and light artwork comprising six microphones and sixteen speakers within one large room. Each speaker is coiled in LED ribbon.
This work was concerned with the sonification of spiking networks of neurons heard through the context of the human voice and is specifically linked to ongoing sound and video work. The computer model runs a network of 100 artificial neurons and records the input sound made by the ‘audience’ into the microphones, and retriggers short 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 additional algorithmic ‘plasticity’ code, which changes network connection strengths according to causal firing between the neurons, mimicking simple ‘learning’. When the neurons ‘fire’, the corresponding LED light also lights up causing cascades of firing events to create a scattering of light and recorded live sound across the speaker network. A chorus of voices performed by The Holst Singers was fed into the work as it opened at the BFI. This chorus then underpinned the work forming a sound bed over which public participation took place.