Listening to a Painting and Communing with Bees; Heavy Metal and the Oratorio for a Million Souls

Abstract

This paper explores different approaches to the sonification and visualisation of two environmental projects undertaken by Nigel Helyer in conjunction with John Drummond.

The interactive installation Heavy Metal is focussed upon the real-time analysis and sonification of the chemical elements in a painting via a camera vision system, whilst the Oratorio for a Million Souls project concerns the behaviour and acoustic properties of live bee colonies manifest in the creation of real-time multi-channel sound compositions and associated sound architectures.

Whilst these two projects differ in terms of methodology, aesthetics and technical approach they both share a direct concern with a deep analysis of the underlying environmental structures and perceptual frameworks that emerge in direct embodied encounters — on one hand the discovery of what lies behind the surface of a painted image in terms of chemical and colour structures — and in the case of Oratorio, a compelling immersion into the acoustic environment of Bees.

Contributors

Dr Nigel Helyer

Dr Jon Drummond

Conference

Publication date: August 2019

Publication date (Print): August 2019

Pages: 15-21

Affiliations

Macquarie University

Sydney, Australia

The University of Newcastle

Newcastle, Australia

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/RESOUND19.3

Copyright statement: © Helyer et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. Proceedings of RE:SOUND 2019

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: RE:SOUND 2019 – 8th International Conference on Media Art, Science, and Technology

Conference acronym: RE:SOUND 2019

Conference number: 8

Conference location: Aalborg, Denmark

Conference date: August 20-23, 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Media Art, Science, and Technology

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/RESOUND19.3

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing