Welcome to the first edition. It gathers theoretical and media-rich contributions, which interrogate the meanings of ‘liveness’ and ‘mediation’ in quite different ways. In consonance with the cross-disciplinary spirit of the journal, these investigations reveal fuzzy thresholds between material and imaterial, entropy and negentropy, self and other.
Editor: Adriana Sá
Contents:
by Miguel Carvalhais
Computational art often explores dematerialisation and immateriality through works that are more grounded on information and causal processes than on formal features or physical materials. Digital computation is substrate independent and so too tend to be those artworks that centre their aesthetic experience on computation. These artworks share several traits with conceptual art, one of them being the challenging of traditional notions of objecthood. Dematerialisation is therefore a recurring strategy in computational art; however, this paper will argue that the hermeneutical processes triggered by computational artworks conversely lead to an ultimate embodiment of artworks, not in physical artefacts, computers, or computational systems, but rather on the readers’ own minds and in processes that are developed from and by the artworks themselves.
Keywords: computational art; media; computational aesthetics; hermeneutics; ergodic reading; dematerialisation
Reviewers: Kate Sicchio || Silvia Coelho || Carolina Martins
by Michelle Lewis-King
Qiscapes 氣穴音景 (2022-) and Pulse Project (2011-2017) are cross-disciplinary research series exploring sound, embodiment, medicine, and cross-cultural science. These projects reimagine East Asian medicine in digital performance, crafting immersive audio environments connecting bodies and surroundings. Qiscapes investigate qi 氣 within the body using the ‘acupunctosonocope’, amplifying acupuncture and detecting ‘qi’ flow. It evidences qi, which is thought not to exist. Pulse Project creates sonic interfaces, translating Chinese pulse diagnosis and acupuncture point location practices into immersive ‘qi’ soundscapes, revealing the Chinese medicine body in all. These interfaces are developed to measure quantum entanglements in individuals and their environments. Through traversing art and medicine, these projects present a cosmological model of body-lifeworld relationship beyond the biomedical model.
Keywords: art-medicine studies, Chinese medicine, cosmotechnics, cross-disciplinary research, biomusic, performance of medicine, spatial sound, transcultural imaginaries
Reviewers: Atau Tanaka || Silvia Coelho || Anonymous
by Rosemary Lee
This essay examines how data-based practices contribute to new perspectives on the empirical value of images. Recent methods employing machine learning enable visualizations to be produced based on the large-scale analysis of data but that are detached from direct sensorial observation, subverting the forms of visual objectivity traditionally associated with technical and scientific methods of image-making. This research aims to develop insights into the forms of visual knowledge that these methods may give rise to, as well as facilitating critical discourse on the grounding of visual practices in relation to technical and scientific methods.
Keywords: data-based aesthetics; generative; machine learning; visual epistemology; operationally real
Reviewers: Jonas Runa || Rui Antunes
by Alexandros Drymonitis
LiveLily is a live sequencing and live scoring system through live coding with a subset of the Lilypond language, a textual language for Western music engraving. Being a simple yet versatile language, Lilypond provides a high level of expressiveness in the resulting music score. LiveLily can either be used as a live scoring system with acoustic instruments, or a live sequencer to control audio software. The expressiveness provided by the Lilypond language contains information on notation, dynamics, articulation and arbitrary text. By using a textual language for the score or the sequencer, it is possible to use a character-level AI text generator to produce melodic lines based on a corpus containing LiveLily sessions. During a live coding session, the text generator is seeded with input by the live coder and sends melodic patterns for the music ensemble it is trained on. The live coder can decide whether they will use these suggestions intact, edit them, or discard them.
Keywords: Live Coding, Live Scoring, LiveLily
Reviewers: Kate Sicchio || Jonas Runa
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This journal is financed by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the project UIDB / 05260/2020 – DOI 10.54499/UIDB/05260/2020
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