Soundwave NightLife: Subliminal Cities
Soundwave ((7)) Biennial returns to celebrate NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences. Artists will activate various locations in the Academy with performances and interactive installations. Yagiz Mungan will showcase a virtual rendering of the city that participants can both navigate and play as an instrument. Using partially immersed VR headsets, Jason Marsh takes audiences through data architectures built by inhabitants of the city and into a new realm. Christopher Willits will be performing new ambient electronic work created with guitar and voice using an 8-channel dimensional audio system in the Piazza. In the African Hall, architecture and design firm ARUP will offer a demonstration of their immersive SoundLab all evening.
Demos + Performances (Locations and Times):
Piazza: Christopher Willits live performance from 8:00pm – 9:00pm
African Hall: Jason Marsh’s “Architecture of Ideas” and ARUP’s SoundLab demo from 6:00pm – 10:00pm
Phillipine Coral Reef: Yagiz Mungan’s “Urban Intermezzo” from 6:00pm – 10:00pm
Jason Marsh presents “Architecture of Ideas”, an experience of symbolic information in Virtual Reality. The source content is quotes from the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The quotes gain a new double meaning: his ideas about a psychological subjective mental experience take on a new perspective when seen applied to a technological immersive experience. We see ideas floating around and through us visually and sonically using both Virtual Reality headsets and computer screens linked together in this short multi-user experience.
Jason Marsh is the Founder and CEO of Flow. Besides being engaged with digital art, he describes himself as an Information Architect for Virtual Reality, actively designing and creating through code for this new medium. With a Masters of Music in composition, he writes and performs his own music and sound for his visual/algorithmic creations. Sometimes this includes live, looped, improvised violin, taking advantage of his Jazz violin degree from Berklee College of Music.
www.marshworks.com
Christopher Willits will be performing new ambient electronic work created with guitar and voice. Using an 8 channel dimensional audio system that is powered by the soon to be released ENVELOP software tools, Willits’ music will resonate and reverberate within the architecture of the CAS Piazza.
Christopher Willits is a musician, artist and teacher based in San Francisco who believes that music and art can catalyze inner change. Willits creates meditative ambient electronic music created with guitar and voice, that is designed to overlap with his own cinematic audiovisual work. These immersive experiences of sound and light speak to a global audience on a universal level. His music on labels such as Ghostly International has garnered critical acclaim, sending him on continuous tours around the world. Multiple solo albums and collaborations with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tycho, and Taylor Deupree have accounted for a diverse catalog with over 25 releases over the last 15 years. Willits is also the founder of the creativity catalyst Overlap, and ENVELOP, a dimensional audio platform currently constructing a venue in San Francisco and open source software tools that are inspired to influence the future of music production. As a devoted teacher, Christopher strives to illuminate people’s creativity in music and art, and has lectured at many leading institutions in the world.
Urban Intermezzo is a sonic interactive installation in a virtual world of San Francisco’s cityscape. Throughout the demonstration, the city becomes a semi-controllable music creation system where participants can create a musical dialogue with the shifting environment. As the buildings are moved, they will trigger synthesizers, creating an evolving lush soundscape. Urban Intermezzo raises questions about the direct effects we have on our urban environment while being present to hear the change that is happening around us.
Yagiz Mungan is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is located at the intersection of sound/music, interaction, performance and virtual worlds. His works integrates technology as an active component and uses interaction to pose critical questions. His solo and collaborative works have been exhibited and performed internationally in United States, Turkey, Germany and Czech Republic.
www.yagizmungan.com
The Architecture
The California Academy of Sciences is a renowned scientific and educational institution dedicated to exploring, explaining, and sustaining life on Earth. Based in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, it’s the only place in the world to house an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum, as well as innovative programs in scientific research and education—all under one living roof.
Website: https://www.calacademy.org/