Live Sonification of Photography

Lecture and Performance of a system for turning photos into sound.

October 2014

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Live Sonification of Photography was a performance / lecture at sound-art salon If Wet in of a new system for turning photographs into sound as a performance piece incorporating portrature, image manipulation and the ANS synth.

This was the culmination of a year or so’s work exploring slit-scan photography, performance photography, sonification of images and many other disparate things.

The presentation is about 25 minutes long with 10 minutes of intro, 10 minutes of demo and 5 minutes of Q&A. Thanks to Sam Underwood and David Morton for hosting.

Documentation and photography (by George Benson) at If Wet.

References

People and subjects mentioned.

Introduction

Slit-scan Photography – Examples
ANS Synthesizer
Eduard Artemyev, composer of Solaris soundtrack.
Coil’s ANS album – Samples – Download
Spectral Songs of the Slitscanned Selfies
Virtual ANS synth software (Mac / Win / Linux / iOS / Android)
Arduino Camera Shield

Demonstration

PhonoPaper app (iOS / Android)

Questions

Photography projects:

Rivers of the World 2019: Thames Festival / British Council scheme twinning schools around the world using local rivers. (2019)

Rivers of the World 2018: Thames Festival / British Council scheme twinning schools around the world using local rivers. (2018)

The Delightful Impossibility of Cityscapes: A lecture to the Kings Norton Photography Society on how to document a city in curious ways. (2017)

Pictures from Dorian Gray: Generating images from a novel using an AI system trained on a photographic archive. (2017)

Auto-blending 2016: Focus-stacking the "best of" photos from news sites. (2016)

20/20 Visions: My New Camera Is A Laser (2016)

Goodbye Wittgenstein: A residency in Linz, Austria. (2016)

A Portrait of Birmingham: A street-level representation of a complex city. (2016)

Art in Crisis: Photography project working with homelessness charity Crisis in Birmingham. (2016)

Speculative Cameras at BOM: Fellowship research project into what cameras could be. (2016)

Trailblazers: Stan's Cafe project working with 120 pupils from 20 schools to discover their opinions about Birmingham through photography. (2015)

Sitting In Stagram: I am logged into an Instagram account, identical to the one you are in now. (2015)

Cross City Walks: A series of walks across Birmingham in as straight a line as possible, undertaken with Andy Howlett. (2014)

Live Sonification of Photography: Lecture and Performance of a system for turning photos into sound. (2014)

Photographic Exploration of Place: Developing an artistic practice based on photo walks. (2013)

Photo School with Pete Ashton: Umbrella for my photography training and event freelance work. (2012)

TTV Pete Exhibition: My first public exhibition of my work - all the TTV photographs in the Moseley Exchange co-working space. (2010)

Outer Circle Bus Stops: Photographing every bus stop on a circular route. (2009)

TTV Pete: Hacking filters from vintage cameras for performative photography (2006)

Talks I've given, mostly in rooms:

Extreme Noticing under Lockdown: Video presentation of art-walking in Stirchley during the pandemic, for 4WCoP. (2020)

1972 v0.1: A first stab at figuring some stuff out. (2019)

Crit Club for Black Hole Club: A review of my art journey to this date, presented to my peers. (2018)

Stirchley Salon: A meetup for artists and makers to present their work to peers. (2018)

Dead Shrines: A camera obscura sculpture in Stirchley Park. (2018)

Instructions for Humans: A Cargo Cult for Artificial Intelligence - artworks exploring human interactions with machines. (2017)

Developed in Birmingham: A camera obscura studio in Birmingham Museum and a Speculative Cameras workshop. (2017)

APHE Human Interfaces conference: I spoke at the Academic Photography in Higher Education conference (2017)

The Delightful Impossibility of Cityscapes: A lecture to the Kings Norton Photography Society on how to document a city in curious ways. (2017)

Experimental Capture workshop for BOM: Sharing knowledge on weird cameras at Art & Tech Social. (2017)

Making it Matter at Random String: An unstructured talk about making politically aware art. (2016)

Speculative Cameras at BOM: Fellowship research project into what cameras could be. (2016)

Live Sonification of Photography: Lecture and Performance of a system for turning photos into sound. (2014)

Typologies of Hypernetworked Vernacular Self-Portraiture: A video essay about selfies. (2014)

Birmingham Zine Festival 2010 Talk: I spoke about The Emergence of the British Small Press Comics Scene in the Early 1980s to an audience of zine enthusiasts. (2010)

A Few Of My Favourite Things - Ikon talk: A talk given at the Ikon gallery as part of their series. (2010)

The 8-Bit Pete Lectures: A talk given at a videogame movie night run by Flatpack Film Festival (2010)

Next art:

Birmingham Open Media Fellowship

November 2014: Fellowship at arts organisation at intersection of art, technology and science.

Previous art:

Ikon Traces

July 2014: Photography art-walk commissioned by the Ikon gallery as part of their 50th anniversary