Motility: Difference
& Rhythm Analysis
Motility: Difference
& Rhythm Analysis
Project Credits: Andrew Lucia, LabStudio
Analysis of a Data Field Through Auditory Filtering
The aim of this research is to examine the change or expected change within a field through an auditory filter. Here, sonic matter can be thought of as grains through time. Any system can be analyzed as such by conceiving of the matter expressed within its boundaries as granules upon an infinitely dense set of time sheets. In the middle or the 20th century, the composer Iannis Xenakis conceived of sound in exactly this manner whereby all sound is reduced to the probability of a particular sonic event (or events) happening within a particular location upon any given time sheet. Using this notion as the basis for composition, Xenakis examined the likelihood that sonic events would continue or disintegrate given their current and past states and location within a larger population.
Using a similar idea we examine change within a cellular system where the existence or absence of data is given preference to the cell itself. Here the object (individual cell) is not of concern, but rather the likelihood of data existing at a particular time and location within a particular neighborhood or datascape. We ask, "are there data and are they changing? If so, how and what is the likelihood that their change will continue?"
By filtering this data through a sonic lens we then open up the possibility of exposing the raw material to a new set of criteria and interaction. It is here that a new set of material signatures can be examined spatially and temporally through non optical means.
Sound has a peculiar ability to interact on a micro level through its individual grains creating unique signatures. These interactions can produce auditory patterns only when exposed to each other in a particular spatiotemporal domain. To a listener, these patterns over time are commonly described as either being dissonant or consonant. In popular western music we often strive for consonant patterns as they are deemed pleasing to a listener. However, if we can overcome a bias towards this notion and accept all patterns as being part of an ongoing system of change we can appreciate consonance (which could be taken as a system in harmonic stasis with itself and its surrounding) but also the near consonant patterns of dissonance which are the hallmarks of a system on the verge of phase changes. Within sound, as within other forms of matter, it is often at these critical moments that systems express themselves as being on the verge of transition.
Therefore we propose it is possible to filter change within one form of matter (tangible) into another (intangible-sonic) in order to expose otherwise hidden forms of behavior. What are the sonic signatures of a healthy system versus a diseased system?