Canada Council for the Arts Tag

AFFECT FLOW

AFFECT FLOW (2022)
Performance at MUTEK Montreal 2023. Photography by Vivien Gaumand.

2022

AFFECT FLOW is a music performance work of approximately 30 minutes that initiates listeners into a state of “non-naturalist emotion”: emotional manufacture as a technology for survival or pleasure. It is a hybrid of electroacoustic music with live-spoken verbal suggestion, an ensemble of live biofeedback created by hardware synthesisers, and song.

In AFFECT FLOW I use psychological hacks borrowed from method acting and clinical psychology in order to move beyond “natural” emotion, playing with biofeedback music paradigms and group participation through folk hypnosis, verbal suggestion, clinical psychology methods, roleplay, song, and textural sounds.

These performance techniques, which I call “wetware,” challenge the authoritarian aura of quantification, transforming biofeedback into a feminist space of posthumanist connection and expression.

The biofeedback performers (up to 10) in AFFECT FLOW are volunteers referred to as surrogates who meet me a half hour before the performance. After a brief musical interlude, I extend an invitation for the audience to join us in guided visualization and hypnosis led by me and my voice. Each surrogate operates a BioSynth, a musical instrument of my design that responds to physiological markers like heart rate, breathing, and skin conductance as a control parameter for electronic sound. The mechanics of the BioSynths are explained clearly, allowing listeners to perceive the shifting mood in the room during the performance through the bodies of the performers. This collaborative interplay of bodies gives rise to affect as an ecological relation, transcending individual subjectivity.

A lightbulb illuminates at the feet of each performer when their signals are amplified. Because I can control the audio outputs of each body via a mixing board, I can highlight solos, duets, trios, and ensemble moments live in the moment.

Credits

Affect Flow (2022)
Music composition and performance by Erin Gee.

Dramaturgy and text by Jena McLean. Poetry by Andrew C. Wenaus.

BioSynth affective hardware synthesizers are an open-source project by Erin Gee. Programming for this iteration by Etienne Montenegro with sonification programming by Erin Gee. PCB design by Grégory Perrin.

Click here for the BioSynth GitHub.

Click here for Tech Rider

Performances:

International Symposium of Electronic Art. CCCB Barcelona, ES, May 2022.

Society for Art and Technology, Montreal CA, July 2022.

Vancouver New Music – Orpheum Annex, Vancouver CA November 2022.

Electric Eclectics Festival, Meaford ON, CA, August 2023

MUTEK Montreal, CA, August 2023.

AFFECT FLOW (2022) at Vancouver New Music, Vancouver.

image of MUTEK 2020 Distant Arcades interface

Distant Arcades: MUTEK Montreal

This exhibition premieres my newest project: “To the Farther” (2020) is a song that combines the aesthetics of ASMR with electronic music. This is part of my ongoing project to produce an ASMRtronica album.  My participation in this exhibition as part of the 2020 Amplify D.A.I. cohort – AMPLIFY D.A.I is an initiative of the British Council in partnership with MUTEK Montréal, MUTEK Buenos Aires and Somerset House Studios in the UK. The programme is supported by Canada Council for the Arts and Fundación Williams.

Distant Arcades

Review: Canadian Art

Amber Berson wrote a thoughtful review on the occasion of Eastern Bloc’s 10th anniversary exhibition Amplification that features discussion and images of my first internet-artwork https://laughingweb.space

This exhibition meant a lot to me as an artist that has been supported by Eastern Bloc over the years not only by the fact that they have exhibited me and involved me in many projects…but also I have been enriched an supported by their fantastic programming.  I salute Eastern Bloc and wish them all the best in their next 10 years!

To read the article, click here.

WorldBuilding: TSV Toronto

November 3rd – December 9th 2017

Trinity Square Video, 401 Richmond, Toronto Canada.

My work made in collaboration with 3D artist Alex M. Lee for VR and emotional-biosensors, Project H.E.A.R.T. (2017) was debuted on November 5th at Trinity Square Video, Toronto.

This project was commissioned by TSV by curators John Hampton and Maiko Tanaka, thanks to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The exhibition also features amazing works by Canadian artists Jeremy Bailey and Kristen Schaffer, Eshrat Erfanian, and Yam Lau.

Visit the Worldbuilding website by clicking here.

 

Project H.E.A.R.T.

Project H.E.A.R.T. (2017)

2017

A biodata-driven VR game where militainment and pop music fuel a new form of emotional drone warfare.

A twist on popular “militainment” shooter video games, Project H.E.A.R.T. invites the viewer to place their fingers on a custom biodata device, and summon their enthusiasm to engage their avatar, Yowane Haku, in “combat therapy.” Fans of the Vocaloid characters may recognize Haku as the “bad copy” of Japanese pop celebrity Hatsune Miku, a holographic personnage that invites her fans to pour their content and songs into her virtual voice.

The biosensing system features a pulse sensor, and a skin conductance sensor of Gee’s design. Through principles of emotional physiology and affective computing, the device gathers data relative to heart rate and blood flow from index finger, and skin conductance from middle and ring fingers of users. The biodata is read by a microcontroller and transferred to Unity VR, thus facilitating emotional interactivity: a user’s enthusiasm (spikes in signal amplitude in skin conductance, elevated heart rate, and shifts in amplitude of the pulse signal) stimulates the holographic pop star to sing in the virtual warzone, thus inspiring military fighters to continue the war, and create more enemy casualties. At the end of the experience the user is confronted with their “score” of traumatized soldiers vs enemies killed, with no information whether this means that they won or lost the “game”.

The user is thus challenged to navigate soldier’s emotional anxieties and summon their positivity to activate Haku’s singing voice as soldiers battle not only against a group of enemies, but also against their own lack of confidence in times of global economic instability.

The landscape of Project H.E.A.R.T. was built from geopolitically resonant sites found on Google Maps, creating a dreamlike background for the warzone. In-game dialogue wavers between self-righteous soldier banter typical of video games, and self-help, bringing the VR participant to an interrogation of their own emotional body in a virtual space that conflates war, pop music, drone technology, and perhaps movement-induced VR nausea.

As Kathryn Hamilton pointed out in her 2017 essay “Voyeur Realism” for New Inquiry,

“VR’s genesis and development is in the military, where it has been used to train soldiers in “battle readiness,” a euphemism for: methods to overcome the innate human resistance to firing at another human being. In the last few years, VR’s usage has shifted 180 degrees from a technology used to train soldiers for war, to one that claims to “amplify” the voices afflicted by war, and to affect “world influencers” who might be able to stop said wars.”

Credits

Narrative Design: Sofian Audry, Roxanne Baril-Bédard, Erin Gee
3D Art: Alex Lee and Marlon Kroll
Animation and Rigging: Nicklas Kenyon and Alex Lee
VFX: Anthony Damiani, Erin Gee, Nicklas Kenyon
Programming: Sofian Audry, Erin Gee, Nicklas Kenyon, Jacob Morin
AI Design: Sofian Audry
Sound Design: Erin Gee, Austin Haughton, Ben Hinckley, Ben Leavitt, Nicolas Ow
BioSensor Hardware Design: Erin Gee and Martin Peach
BioSensor Case Design: Grégory Perrin
BioSensor Hardware Programming: Thomas Ouellet Fredericks, Erin Gee, Martin Peach
Featuring music by Lazerblade, Night Chaser and Austin Haughton
Yowane Haku character designed by CAFFEIN
Yowane Haku Cyber model originally created by SEGA for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd (2010)
Project H.E.A.R.T. also features the vocal acting talents of Erin Gee, Danny Gold, Alex Lee, Ben McCarthy, Gregory Muszkie, James O’Calloghan, and Henry Adam Svec.

Thanks to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and AMD Radeon, this project was commissioned by Trinity Square Video for the exhibition Worldbuilding, curated by John G Hampton and Maiko Tanaka.

This project would have not been possible without the logistical and technical support of the following organizations:

Technoculture Art and Games Lab (Concordia University)

Concordia University

ASAP Media Services (University of Maine)

Exhibition history

November-December 2017  Worldbuilding @ Trinity Square Video, Toronto

February-March 2018 Future Perfect @ Hygienic Gallery, New London Connecticut

April 26-28, 2018 @ Digifest, Toronto

June 7-17, 2019 @ Elektra Festival, Montreal

January 2020 @ The Artist Project, Toronto

October 2020 @ Festival LEV Matadero, Spain

Links

Project H.E.A.R.T. official website
Worldbuilding Exhibition Website
Review in Canadian Art
My research blog: Pop and Militainment
Featured on Radiance VR

Video

Project H.E.A.R.T (2017)
Installation and Gameplay

Gallery

VR Commission Update

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the art developed last summer in a residency at the Technoculture Art and Games lab at Concordia University with lead 3D artist Alex Lee, AI designer Sofian Audry, art assistant Marlon Kroll, and research assistant Roxanne Baril-Bédard. Among holographic popstars who may or may not have their own consciousness to begin with, the project includes rhetorical analysis of post 9/11 counterterrorist video games, reality television, startup culture, and self-help manuals for improving emotional state.

I am implementing the Biosensor control system this Winter and plan on working on finalizing the game’s art, music and sounds this summer for a launch towards the end of 2017 in an exhibition at Trinity Square Video in Toronto.


In the future, weapons of war possess advanced AI systems, systems that guarantee successful automated combat on behalf of soldiers wielding the technology.  The military still trains its soldiers in case of equipment failure, but at this point, fighters function more as passive operators. The terrorist threat has nothing similar to this technology in their ranks, and the effectiveness of our systems is swift and deadly.  Historically, our soldiers manning the machines have never witnessed violence or devastation at this scale: the largest threat to soldiers today defending our nation’s values is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

To address this unfortunate state of affairs, the military developed a startup fund open to the public to resolve this issue through technological innovation.  Significant scholarships and research funding was provided for researchers interested in devoting time to creating a means towards mitigating the psychological crisis.  A risky but intriguing proof of concept was eventually presented: the creation of a revolutionary entertainment for the troops as they fought the terrorist threat.

Yowane Haku became the face of this entertainment: a mobile holographic pop star engineered specifically for psychological distraction on the battlefield.  

The world’s most talented engineers, design consultants, and pop writing teams were assembled to enshrine Haku with every aesthetic and technical element to impress not only the troops, but the world with her next-generation technology.  However, the initial test-run of this mobile holographic pop medium in combat trials was….a failure.  

On the battlefield, Haku’s perfect body glowed faintly amongst the dust and screams, bullets and explosions passing ineffectually, dance moves precise, vocalizations on point. But ultimately her pop music performance lacked resonance with the battle.  Instead of the soldiers being emboldened by this new entertainment, which was intended to distract or inspire them from their gruesome tasks, their adverse psychological symptoms…flourished.  Some of the men went mad, laughing maniacally in tune with the holographic presence smiling sweetly at them.  It was only due to the superiority of our AI weaponry and automated drone operation that the morally corrupt foreign threat, with their violent and technologically crude methods, were stopped that day. The minds of our soldiers were lost.

Months later, a young pool of startup professionals would provide another solution.  This vocal minority of engineers…though others called them crazy….had a hunch. For the hologram pop star to “work,” her systems needed access pure emotion, to link a human element with the trauma of the human soldiers.  But it was not clear who, or what, could best provide this emotional link…and what amount of embodied “disruption” this might entail…

This enthusiastically crowdfunded group of millennials completed their groundbreaking research without the strings of ethics funding or institutional control.  Human emotions and consciousness now flow direct to Haku via experimental trials in VR technology.  Haku rises again on the battlefront.

Simultaneously, a new reality television show has been borne of these first human trials. The star of this reality show could be…….you.

Could you be the next American Sweetheart?  Do you have what it takes to provide 110% Best Emotional Performance?  Join us through advanced VR technologies, Live and Direct on the battlefield, to find out if you could be fit to man the ultimate weapon of war: Our Next Holographic Idol.

This project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Trinity Square Video’s AMD VR lab

Song of Seven

Song of Seven (2016)

2016

A composition for children’s choir featuring seven voices and seven sets of biodata with piano accompaniment.

In this song, young performers contemplate an emotional time in their lives, and recount this memory as an improvised vocal solo.The choir is instructed to enter into a meditative state during these emotional solos, deeply listening to the tale and empathizing with the soloist, using imagination to recreate the scene.  Choir members are attached to a musical instrument I call the BioSynth a small synthesizer that sonifies heartbeats and sweat release for each individual member to pre-programmed tones. Sweat release, often acknowledged as a robust measure of emotional engagement, is signaled by overtones that appear and reappear over a drone; meanwhile the heartbeats of each chorister are sounded according to blood flow, providing a light percussion.

The musical score combines traditional music notation with vocal games and rhythms determined not necessarily by the conductor or score but by beatings of the heart and bursts of sweat. Discreet flashing lights on the synthesizer boxes in front of the choristers allowed the singers to discern the rhythms and patterns of their heart and sweat glands, which therefore permits compositions to incorporate the rhythms of the body into the final score as markers that trigger sonic events.

Credits

Piano accompanist: Daniel Àñez

Hardware design: Martin Peach

Software design: Erin Gee

Performance history

This choral composition was workshopped over a one-week residency at the LIVELab (McMaster University) with selected members of the Hamilton Children’s Choir, and facilitated by Hamilton Artists Inc. with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Links

Hamilton Children's Choir
Daniel Àñez (Spanish biography)
Hamilton Artists' Inc
LIVElab
Canada Council for the Arts

Video

Song of Seven (2016)

Scores

Song of Seven (2016)

Gallery

Song of Seven (2016)

New Work for Hamilton Children’s Choir

 

On June 25th 2016 I will be premiering new biosensor-driven work created especially for members of the Hamilton Children’s Choir.  This performance work will be presented in conjunction with my solo exhibition Vocales Digitales at Hamilton Artists Inc, thanks to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

The Hamilton Children’s Choir is a nationally competitive choir of youth  accompanied by pianist Daniel Añez.  Áñez is a renowned pianist in the musical milieu of Canada and Latin America, an active performer of contemporary and experimental music, a touring soloist, and a chamber musician.

This new work will allow me to explore a highly personal composition process with the choir, featuring the sonification of group empathy as seen through physiological markers of emotion such as heartrate, respiration and sweat release.

For more information

Hamilton Children’s Choir

Daniel Añez (Spanish Biography)

Hamilton Artists Inc

Canada Council for the Arts