Studio – Page 12 – VITAL CAPACITIES

INTERACTIONS [Landscape]

I think a good landscape should be enticing and thought-provoking. The power of landscape design is immense and should never be underestimated. As I mentioned before for this reincarnation of Tuner I plan on bringing it back underground to grow the sense enclose, need for air and to assist in the game plays interactions of fish collecting practices.

SCANNERS
The Scanner is like a radar mechanism, when found and attached to the boats roof hook, all 3 of it orbs rotate about their orbits, at each turn displacing a line to their nearest corresponding subject, ie Fish, Junk and Rockets. All these three orbs speeds can be controlled individually sonically creating an ever phasing sequence. Initially this control was access via the Midi protocol each orb having their own physic knob here on earth. But now the foam of interacting will need to be re-designed into the GUI interface.
The scanner is also a lantern for dark zones epically when the internal torchlight fades due to the boats’ strength depletion . I will supply the new scanner in operation (video), here below are some (blurred) old in game shots.

INTERACTIONS [BOAT + INTERFACES]

by Clifford Sage

The boat in Tuner has a couple functions in addition to its moveability it currently contains 6 other operations such as Its fish Basket (safe), four feeders (to temp fish), a Missile and Laser system (to access uncharted areas) and telescopic neck adjuster (to see into crevasses) plus a radio!

TUNER

by Clifford Sage

Tuner an audiovisual piece originally designed as an experimental live AV project showing initially at Somerset House Londons AGM 2018 festival (since performed at Club Adriatico, L.E.V. Festival, Genot Centre, MK Gall, Xolo,Bleep) and has endured various reincarnations. Now as part of Vital Capacities residency I am developing it to be playable piece as a download and also a recorded showcase! The project has primarily been designed from a solo performance point of view. Programming all the input events and actions via audio instrument protocols with MIDI and OSC. This was to allow a unique haptic setup where I could control multiple elements live and be more at home, as it is part of my music practice also, recsund!

Force

by Angela Su

The Dutil-Dumas symbol of 'force' is built with dark grey 'Polished Blackstone Slab' on the main road outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. The image shows a night scene with street lights in the background. The front entrance of Cattle Depot is on the left. A panda bear is checking out the newly built sign on a starry night, to see if there's anything suspicious. — The symbol of ‘Force’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. Panda is checking out the sign to see if there’s anything suspicious.

FORCE: violent physical action used to obtain or achieve something (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• The government has relied on brute force to respond to public discontent.

A Conversation (Word Salad)

by Damien Robinson

This week I’ve been focusing on practicalities for making risograph prints. As my region (England) is in lockdown, this involves a lot of forward planning, material purchase and prep that’s not very interesting to read about. So I’ve also been experimenting with AI transcripts to create a little script from some of the most egregious examples of distortion (looking at you, Microsoft Teams).

This has been added as a document and images.

A Conversation (Word Salad)Download

A page of text that looks like a script. While individual words are comprehensible, the overall text is garbled, a "word salad" — “A Conversation (Word Salad)”; Page 1 Text construction from AI software transcripts 2020

The aim is to give the reader a feel of what it’s like trying to make sense of a situation which isn’t accessible, and the impossibility of acting on information which doesn’t make sense. During the current pandemic, misunderstanding is not merely an amusing anecdote (a la Auberon Waugh’s tale of mishearing “press freedom” and delivering a lecture on “breast feeding”), it’s dangerous. Currently, the UK offers no BSL interpretation for government briefings. While the BBC provides interpreters for government announcements, not everyone has access to the BBC, and clips shown on social media won’t be inherently accessible. And scientific briefings are not shown with BSL interpretation. It’s the government’s responsibility, not the BBC’s. Too many organisations push the responsibility for accessing information onto individuals rather than thinking about how they can make it straightforward.

So, anyway, I’ve been tiger, because you know, the man who chases two hairs catches mom.

10 November 2020

by Angela Su

A message from Minecraft that says my character Rosy Leavers fell out of the world and died. — Rosy fell into void on 10 November 2020 and died.

In trying to free the animals and save them from falling into the void, Rosy died in the first week of her residency in Cattle Depot.

Lipreading in the age of COVID-19

by Damien Robinson

I was taught lipreading before I began using BSL (British Sign Language) and use the two communication methods contiguously. The term “lipreading” is somewhat misleading, as it’s not just lip patterns that contribute to understanding – you pick up information from the rest of the face, from body language, and from the contextual environment (context is something I’ll be picking up on again). My biggest obstacle is dark sunglasses that block the information you see around people’s eyes; if lip patterns provide information on words, the eye area often gives the equivalent of tone of voice, and lipreading people wearing sunglasses translates as a monotone to me.

During 2020, the ratio has been flipped, with masks preventing lipreading, but often leaving the eyes and surrounding areas clear; I’ve started to notice that I still pick up information, so can (sometimes) recognise tone, even if there’s no way to pick up words. I’ve also noticed hearing people struggling with understanding (with masks muffling voices), and am wondering if this will impact on people’s thinking about hearing loss in the longer term. Will their own difficulties lead to more understanding? Will they turn to D/deaf people as communication experts they can learn from?

I’ve been playing with images from the 1986 edition of “Lipreading – A Guide for Beginners”, masking the lip patterns illustrated. I’m planning a duotone risograph print, perhaps using several of these images – due to local lockdown I can only prep my files at present, so anything shown at this stage is an approximation.

Black and white photo showing a woman's face. Superimposed is an orange facemask. Only her eyes are visible. On the bottom left are the letters "OO"t ar — “OO”- Lipreading in the age of COVID (study for risograph) 2020

The virtual site of Cattle Depot Artist Village in Minecraft

by Angela Su

Photograph showing the entrance to Cattle Depot in Hong Kong. The entrance is an archway inside a red brick building on two storeys, with two smaller outbuildings either side. The roofs of the buildings are covered in a dark rough tile, which is in parts covered in a red moss. Behind the buildings are tenement buildings, each approximately 10 storeys high; the one on the left is pale blue and grey, the central one is cream with orange stripes running beneath the windows, and the one on the right is pale salmon-orange/pink. The sky is overcast, pale grey-blue. — The physical space of Cattle Depot Artist Village in Hong Kong

Cattle Depot Artist Village was originally used as a slaughterhouse from 1908 to 1999. It was renovated and developed into an artist village in 2001. It is now home to around 20 art groups including the media art organisation Videotage.

For its first digital residency program, Videotage recreated in one-to-one scale the virtual site of Cattle Depot in the sandbox game Minecraft.

Screenshot of the virtual site of Cattle Depot in Minecraft. Buildings in digital red brick showing the Cattle Depot, with grey roof tiles and trees in the courtyard at the centre.
Behind the Cattle Depot is a small park with trees. And to the left of Cattle Depot is another red brick building with a dark green roof. Buildings a re a mixture of one and two storeys in height.
A grid structure was built in the sky above the site by the previous resident artist. This forms a matrix against the blue sky. — Screenshot of the virtual site of Cattle Depot in Minecraft

I downloaded Minecraft today and got into the realm of Cattle Depot. What you see here is the aerial view of the site. The glass grid structure was build by the previous resident artist. I basically wandered around, tried to get familiar with all the keyboard commands, broke a gate by accident but managed to find a very hidden passageway that led me to the top of the grid.

Cosmic Call

by Angela Su

For this residency, I want to create a series of symbols from the Dutil-Dumas message as an intervention in a virtual art space. The work will reference a previous work Cosmic Call. (An audio description of the visuals in the trailer is available)

One minute trailer of Cosmic Call

Audio description of the images in the trailer

Installation view of Cosmic Call with a flatscreena and two cube monitors. The seats are designed based on a code from the Dutil-Dumas Message — Installation view of *Cosmic Call* at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong

Cosmic Call is a work commissioned by Wellcome Collection in 2018

The main video weaves together facts and fiction to create an alternative understanding of epidemics. Cosmic Call resists the dominant narrative of a disease outbreak – a formulaic plot of a detective story about disease emergence and eventually the triumph of western medical science – and suggests multiple belief systems in which science is only one of many ways to understand communicable diseases. It points to the danger of reducing all knowledge to scientific terms while addressing issues that are pertinent to Hong Kong, which is characterised by its high population density and mobility – conditions that make Hong Kong extremely vulnerable to disease outbreaks.

In the video, an interstellar message (the Dutil-Dumas message) was sent by extra-terrestrial life forms that warned human beings of epidemics caused by passing comets. Information about the Dutil-Dumas message can be found on the RESEARCH section of the website.

What On Earth am I doing?

by Clifford Sage

Well for starters it’s going to be made within a computer program (CAD)!
Continuing of my past projects shared Universe of ‘Tuner’ and ‘ProDancer’ we may find our selves in an off world sorting office re-distribute saved animals from past realms and sending them off adequately!

Hope to conclude as a downloadable executable both VR and Monitor based! As a wide narrative I’ve often related works on signalling and ever find it captivating in a virtual sense, here are some past worlds I may extend their essence into this currently unnamed one.

disabled becon from Buddha Geomatry child

“He maybe did” or “He may be dead”?

by Damien Robinson

2020 has been a year of information distortion for many people in many ways. Being deaf means my focus has been around digital and physical access – or lack of access – to information, something I’ll be exploring during the residency. Originally, I had been viewing my planned areas of research – typography and dummy text, AI transcription, and sound effect captioning – as distinct, albeit with some loose links. Maybe these areas have more in common than I envisaged?

I’ve begun looking at Dr Rachael Tatman’s research around conversational AI and linguistics and have been struck by the similarities between the areas of error in AI, conventional listening, and lipreading. These are often mirrored in typographic and compositing errors.

The images in this post are taken from