Erin Gee Tag

to the sooe

11.10.2018 , Gallery Artwork, Physical Media, Portfolio, Robotics/AI/XR/Quantum, Sound Art

to the sooe (2018)
Sofian Audry and Erin Gee. Photography: Alexandre Saunier

2018

A 3D printed sound object that houses a human voice murmuring the words of a neural network trained by a deceased author.

to the sooe (SLS 3D printed object, electronics, laser-etched acrylic, audio, 2018) is the second piece in a body of work Erin Gee made in collaboration with artist Sofian Audry that explores the material and authorial agencies of a deceased author, a LSTM algorithm, and an ASMR performer.

The work in this series transmits the aesthetics of an AI “voice” that speaks through outputted text through the sounds of Gee’s softly spoken human vocals, using a human body as a relatively low-tech filter for processes of machine automation.  Other works in this series include of the soone (2018), and Machine Unlearning (2018-2019)

to the sooe is a sound object that features a binaural recording of Erin Gee’s voice as she re-articulates the murmurs of a machine learning algorithm learning to speak. Through this work, the artists re-embody the cognitive processes and creative voices of three agents (a deceased author, a deep learning neural net, and an ASMR performer) into a tangible device. These human and nonhuman agencies are materialized in the object through speaking and writing: a disembodied human voice, words etched onto a mirrored, acrylic surface, as well as code written into the device’s silicon memory.

The algorithmic process used in this work is a deep recurrent neural network agent known as “long short term memory” (LSTM). The algorithm “reads” Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights character by character, familiarizing itself with the syntactical universe of the text. As it reads and re-reads the book, it attempts to mimic Brontë’s style within the constraints of its own artificial “body”, hence finding its own alien voice.

The reading of this AI-generated text by a human speaker allows the listener to experience simultaneously the neural network agent’s linguistic journey as well as the augmentation of this speech through vocalization techniques adapted from Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). ASMR involves the use of acoustic “triggers” such as gentle whispering, fingers scratching or tapping, in an attempt to induce tingling sensations and pleasurable auditory-tactile synaesthesia in the user. Through these autonomous physiological experiences, the artists hope to reveal the autonomous nature of the listener’s own body, implying the listener as an already-cyborgian aspect of the hybrid system in place.

Credits

Sofian Audry – neural network programming and training

Erin Gee – vocal performer, audio recording and editing, electronics

Grégory Perrin – 3D printing design and laser etching

Exhibition history

Taking Care – Hexagram Campus Exhibition @ Ars Electronica, Linz Sept 5-11 2018. Curated by Ana Kerekes.

Printemps Numérique – McCord Museum Montreal, May 29-June 3 2019. Curated by Erandy Vergara.

To the Sooe – MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina January 26-April 26, 2020. Curated by Tak Pham.

Sounds

to the sooe (2018)

Gallery

Machine Unlearning @ META MARATHON Düsseldorf

04.05.2018 , News, Performances

I will be performing (and live streaming) a new audio performance work that features myself in a live ASMR re-performance of deep learning text.  The work will be accessed through a streaming YouTube link via the distributed screens of audience member’s smartphones and laptops for a half hour via headphones in a quiet environment where blankets and sleeping are invited as part of the work.  This performance will take place as part of META MARATHON at NRW Forum, Düsseldorf, Germany on May 26, 2018.

NEW TECHNOLOGY FESTIVAL META MARATHON AT THE NRW-FORUM DÜSSELDORF

42 hours of non-stop talks, performances, film screenings, concerts, exhibitions, and workshops on the subject of Artificial Intelligence: the META Marathon is a new technology festival taking place from 25th to 27th May 2018 at the NRW Forum Düsseldorf. The participants design the festival themselves, switch roles between expert and amateur as well as experiment with the new format—including on-site accommodation. The Festival Director is the futurist and entrepreneur Christopher Peterka.

An innovative technology festival and a digital happening: META is an invitation to participants to collaborate in an open process and collectively develop new ideas on digital modernity and Artificial Intelligence. In doing so, META breaks away from the series of digital conferences and exhibitions that talk about phenomena more than being part of them.

META follows from the assumption that the changes made by digital technologies are so radical that they require new kinds of research and understanding. The participants are invited to work together in a 42-hour marathon packed with stimulating events—in workshops, labs, and talks with sometimes radical exploratory methods—and have the opportunity to spend the night at the NRW Forum.

Those wishing to participate must apply in advance at https://www.metamarathon.net/. The cost of taking part is 42€, which includes food and a sleeping place, and there is space for a total of 400 curious pioneers. Some of those who have already registered are creatives and thinkers from the realms of research, teaching, economics, art and culture, including artist and composer Erin Gee, professor and curator Joasia Krysa, artist and professor Hans Bernhard (Uebermorgen. com), Professor Chris Geiger, nyris founder Anna Lukasson-Herzig, and many more.

What will language look like in the future and how will we use it? How is digital media changing communication? What are the most important skills when machines and Artificial Intelligence are capable of performing human work? How do we perceive and communicate with each other in a world determined by the flow of information and data? Based on the historical agenda of the Macy Conferences, META addresses the issues of memory and storage, language, communication, and learning and perception. The Macy Conferences were ten interdisciplinary conferences that took place between 1946 and 1953 in the United States. It was a hitherto unprecedented open experimental arrangement in which scientists of various disciplines such as neurophysiology, mathematics, psychology, and sociology worked out the basics of cybernetics and cognitive science.

With its novel format, META would like to go beyond the concept of a conference and be a discursive space in which digital modernity and its radical social changes can be explored and described in a festival setting. Contributors should bring their own questions and theories and be prepared to let themes develop on the spot as well as engage in open dialogue between people, disciplines, and machines. The outcome is open and applications will be accepted immediately.

To find more detailed information about the program and to apply visit: https://www.metamarathon.net/

META Marathon
25-27.5.2018

Starts: 25.5, 21:59
Ends: 27.5, 9.30

NRW-Forum Düsseldorf | Ehrenhof 2 | 40479 Düsseldorf

Press Contakt | Irit Bahle | Phone: +49 (0)211-89266-81 | [email protected]

For more information, or to register for the event, visit the META MARATHON website

New World Notes

26.02.2018 , Articles, Interviews, News

Project H.E.A.R.T. (2018) was written about by Wagner James Au in his New World Notes blog on virtual worlds. I’m particularly tickled about this because he is the official blogger for the virtual world Second Life, so I’m very honored that he finds the world of Project H.E.A.R.T. interesting!

Wagner James Au, consultant and author of “The Making of Second Life” (HarperCollins) and “Game Design Secrets” (Willey) reports on virtual worlds, VR and related topics — including augmented reality, virtual currency, games and game development, and their appearances in RL popular culture and politics.

Click here to see the article

Rhode Island College

25.02.2018 , Exhibitions, News

“// lonely avatar”, is an exhibition which investigates the use, meaning, and expressive potential of avatars in the contemporary digital landscape. “Lucid Dreaming” ruminates on the emptiness of the virtual avatar whilst “Project H.E.A.R.T.” involves filling that empty avatar with your emotion through a specially designed biosensor. Both projects follow a trajectory of thought in regards to the metaphorical potential of avatars in the virtual space. Curated by Frank Yefeng Wang, this show features works by Alex M Lee commissioned by Trinity Square Video in Toronto, ON and a project made in collaboration with Canadian artist Erin Gee.

Opening reception: 5-8pm
Artist Lecture: 7-7:30pm

The Chazan Family Gallery
Alex & Ani Hall
Rhode Island College
600 Mt. Pleasant Ave
Providence, RI 02908

Her Environment Chicago

08.01.2018 , Exhibitions, News

I am previewing a new work I made in collaboration with Sofian Audry, tentatively titled DeepASMR at Her Environment in Chicago in a few days.

Without giving away too much, I’ve been working with Sofian on how AI can be processed, embodied, and felt as a personal relationship through gentle whispers and vocalizations. The work exists as a sound recording for the moment.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Murmurs and Palpitations is a show about ritualized processes of healing and understanding. The show confronts the politics of navigating emotional responses within an environment of virtuality by directly remediating our lived experiences. The pieces in this show pose the question of the dynamic between intimate and immersive media and the ontological self, as experienced through multiple senses and ritualistic gestures. Interpreting Murmurs and Palpitations as sensory and experiential – living electronics – listening to the pulses and vibrations of the works, as they change rhythm through the practice of their language, their breath, the sound and smells of their environment.

Her Environment is an expanded new media art series highlighting feminine spectrum artists. Our focus is on broadening the understanding of how New Media practices can be used in multiple forms of art making, from video to installation and performance. Our aim is to show pieces that challenge how new media can be used, and the male dominated culture that surrounds it.

/
murmuring of screens, of bodies
living electronics, low, soft voices
breathing && quivering
chattering
palpitating
actions
actions
actions
incoming messages && touches
exercise in the form of repetitive motions
healing

Curated by
Chelsea Welch & Iryne Roh
w/ Allie Shyer & Nina Berman

~~~~~~~
Video Games:
Paloma Dawkins – Gardenarium (Canada)
Tahutahu Studios – Idearum (Madrid, Spain)

Installations:
Hannah Newman – Sky Water (Portland, OR)
Samantha Fickel – Touch Screen (Illinois, US)
Rena Anakwe – Living Narratives [iter.03] (Brooklyn, NY)
Madeeha Lamoreaux – Obtained | Retained [Blood Battery] (Chicago, IL)

Videos:
Hiba Ali – Con-tai-ner (Chicago, IL)
Hifsa Farooq – Two Fans (Lahore, Pakistan)
Yaloo Pop – Workout Routine 2018 (Seoul, Korea/Chicago, IL)

Sound:
Erin Gee and Sofian Audry – Deep ASMR (Montreal, Canada)

Performance:
Mitsu Salmon -Formosan Wood (Chicago, IL)

~~~~~~~~~
01/10/2018 ~ 01/27/2018
MURMURS AND PALPITATIONS is open for viewing from January 10th through the 27th!

Review in Canadian Art

09.12.2017 , Articles, News, Reviews

I really appreciate this article by Tatum Dooley for Canadian Art on the Worldbuilding exhibition curated by John G Hampton and Maiko Tanaka at Trinity Square Video. My work Project H.E.A.R.T. which highlights VR and emotions made with Alex M Lee is featured, among other great works by Jeremy Bailey Kristen D Schaffer Eshrat Erfanian and Yam Lau.  Following is an excerpt from the article:

“The gamification of our bodies renders the physical form void, replaced by screens where our bodies and emotions can be morphed and manipulated. Perhaps the only way to create art with technology as advanced and recent as VR is to reckon with its potential consequences.

Gee’s project, the most realized out of the four artists in the exhibition, masters this reckoning. I spoke with Gee in the lead-up to the exhibition, and she explained the conceptual backbone of the piece. “I’m working through questions of emotional sincerity when it comes to self-help. In theory, if you can technologically master your emotions, if you can just make yourself excited, then you can make yourself a better, happier person. I don’t know how sincere that is…”

Click on the link below for the full article.

VR and the Failure of Self-Help Technology

In general, I feel very proud of this work but also very exhausted by it.  Through the project I’ve been working through the relationship between pop music and war, self help and sincerity, and ultimately I’m working through these issues of technique and technology in how life and trauma comes to us.  During the panel for the exhibition, there was a question of whether I was “pro-war”, and it’s one that I have received a few times in facebook messages from curious friends from far away.  The project is complex and difficult to read because I think it has to be.  It reflects my own mediatized understanding of international conflict, maybe my own frustration at my lack of understanding.

The best I can understand war is how it is mediated to me: through video games and news cycles, through abstract discussions on the radio. The goal of this project was never to address the terror and complexity of geopolitical conflict, but rather, to propose a psychedelic pop culture mirror, imagining a video game ruled not by characters that espouse self-righteous violence and grit, but technologically manipulated empathy and enthusiasm.  This game fails to address war in the same way that all technologically mediated attempts to do so fail to address war.  I also am also dissatisfied at the idea of an artistic protest that makes a cartoonish, morally didactic utopia where rainbows and love shoot out of guns instead of flesh-tearing bullets. I think the answer about the politics of this game lie in the end screen: an abstract screen that confronts you with statistics of death and trauma as a result of the battle itself.  I don’t think there is a way to win the game.

Affective VR Workshop

15.11.2017 , Workshops

Welcome

Welcome to the Emotional Data and Unity/VR workshop!  This workshop is hosted by Erin Gee, a Canadian artist and researcher who has worked in emotional biodata and art since 2012.  She has created work for emotional biodata and robotics (Swarming Emotional Pianos, 2014), children’s choir (Song of Seven, 2017), and now for VR with her latest work Project H.E.A.R.T (2017).

She is an active promoter of open-source and feminist culture, and publishes all of her technical work (Arduino code/Unity code) under the GNU GPL 3.0.

What is the GNU GPL?

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

TLDR: You may use, modify, redistribute this code for free.  If you redistribute, you must acknowledge my original authorship, and you must always allow other people to also modify and redistribute for free.  Any violation of this agreement means that you are breaking my copyright!  If you do modify aspects of this code, please share the love and contribute to the GitHub.

If you are not sure how to contribute to a GitHub project, feel free to contact me at erin dot marie dot gee at gmail dot com (or just the contact form on my website) and I’ll set you up!

For the full documentation of GNU GPL v3, click here.

Contextual Resource Section

BIOSENSORS IN GAMES

April 13th, 2011

Jacob Aron first reported on a variety of games that were taking advantage of biosensing technologies in an article published in New Scientist.

Aron, Jacob. (2011). “Emotional Video Gaming Makes the Action Real.” New Scientist.  Accessed November 15th 2017.

October 2016 – BfB Labs’ emotionally responsive game “Champions of the Shengha,” is dependent on a user’s emotional control — measured by a heart rate sensor — for success.

October 2016 – Nevermind is an adventure game where you explore strange worlds and solve puzzles to unlock a mystery that lurks within each “patient’s” inner psyche.  The Windows and Mac versions of Nevermind use biofeedback technology to detect your feelings of stress while playing, dynamically responding to those feelings to affect gameplay.  You can also play the game without this technology. http://nevermindgame.com/

BIOSENSORS IN CINEMA

Published by The Verge on 18 Jul 2017.

Lauren Goode goes inside Dolby’s little-known biophysical labs, where the company has been embarking on a five-year project to track people’s emotional responses as they watch movies and TV shows.

Biosensors are used by Dolby to study viewers’ emotional responses to

  • Aural frequency ranges
  • Dynamic color ranges
  • Audio volume as well as screen brightness
  • Music and sound effects

VR and Empathy – A reading list

Ebert, Roger. (June 23, 2005.) “Ebert’s Hall of Fame Remarks.” Roger Ebert’s Journal. Accessed November 15th 2017.

Bye, Kent. (January 31, 2017). “VR as the Ultimate Empathy Machine with Gabo Arora.”  Voices of VR Podcast.  Accessed November 13th 2017.

Hamilton, Kathryn. (February 23, 2017). “Voyeur Reality.” The New Inquiry. Accessed November 15th 2017.

Yang, Robert. (April 5, 2017). “If you walk in someone else’s shoes, then you have taken their shoes”: empathy machines as appropriation machines.”  radiator design blog.  Accessed November 15th 2017.

Scientific Resources

In this section you will find information on the science behind how emotion is generated by the brain, and how it can be “read” by sensing instruments.

What is Emotion

Emotion is a multi-component response to an emotionally potent event, causing changes in subjective feeling quality (psychological dimension), expressive social behavior (behavioral dimension), and physiological activation (physiological dimension) of the subject. (Kreiberg 2009)

Psychological/neurological frameworks for understanding emotion itself are articulated very well by Dr Lisa Feldman-Barrett, a scientist at Northeastern University.  She speaks particularly of the complexity of the human body, which might be experiencing a host of physiological effects from the ANS system, and how these are interpreted and perhaps also constructed by language.

On her website you will find many plain-language resources for emotional understanding from a contemporary neuroscientific point of view under the heading “Articles.”

How Scientists detect Emotion

The physiological techniques presented at this workshop were made according to psychologist Dr. Sylvia Kreibig‘s 2010 review of 134 publications dating from the 1970s to the 2000s. While the techniques viewed in this document are not weighted for “success” of the cited studies, and the literature clearly shows that there is no one “technique” for applying these skills, this document that has been cited over 1000 times in scientific literature since its publication, including over 200 times in 2017.

Source:

Kreibig,Sylvia D. “Autonomic nervous system activity in emotion: A review.” Biological Psychology 84 (2010) 394–421.

 

Continued research
If you would like to continue keeping up with scientific research in this area, an academic journal search using the databases PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and PubMed is recommended with the following search terms:

[emotion] and [autonomic nervous system or cardiovascular or cardiac or heart or respiration or respiratory or electrodermal or skin conductance]

 

Technical Resource Section

Unity Tutorials

This section is dedicated to technical resources, tutorials and code to get you started playing around with the biosensors.

Mirza VFX teaches amazing tutorials in particle creation.  Plug your biosensors in to manipulate beautiful particle-driven environments.

(Inspiration: Mufson, Beckett. (Aug 29, 2014) “A Team Of Artists Are 3D-Printing Their Emotions As Abstract House Decorations.”  Creators Project.  Accessed November 15th 2017.)

GitHub

Erin Gee’s BioData Duo Github

Prossel’s UnitySerialPort GitHub

Hardware Resources

Materials list for Erin Gee’s BiodataTrio PCB board.

Don’t forget to prepare your PulseSensor before you use it!  Click here for instructions on how to apply the protective decal and provide a gluegun seal.  The rest of the advice you can take or leave, but these two steps are ESSENTIAL to the longevity and accuracy of your device!

When buying cables to build your sensors – Look for cable that features 2 signals that are shielded.  The biosensors are picking up on very, very sensitive electrical information from the body – any disruption in the electric field could make your readings less accurate.  Especially if the sensor cables are placed near to one another!

To prevent this, you can either buy shielded cable (like this) and solder the silver shielding to your ground connection (pick whatever you like for the other two, maybe red for power and black for signal?)

Or if you’re in a pinch, you can just twist the ground wire around the signal wire that you are trying to protect from outside interference.

Here’s a link to my Respiration Belt Instructable.  After a few years I didn’t find that a respiration belt was as interesting to me because the belts are awkward to strap into for the average person, but if you’d like to go for it, here is a simple way to make it happen!  This signal is perhaps best amplified, and you might need to calculate the relative drift of the elastic and account for it as an offset in order to capture things like when someone is holding their breath.

Ideas Lab Denmark

12.11.2017 , News, Teaching, Workshops

I will be giving a unique and in-depth workshop hosted by Emotional Data Lab (Aarhus University), Interactive Denmark and Ideas Lab in Aarhus, Denmark from November 21-23.  The workshop consists of 3 three-hour sessions where I will share my materials and experiences with incorporating physiological markers of emotion into the VR-compatible Unity environment.

Participants will be placed into “teams” in order to work together, experiment, and discuss the promises, problems and potential of using biosensors to capture a user’s emotional experience through digital tools.

William Basinski @ Pop Montreal

27.08.2017 , Artist Talks, Interviews, News

September 15th, 2017 – 17h POP Box (3450 St Urbain, Montreal)

In the context of this year’s Pop Montreal Festival Symposium, I have been invited to engage in a public conversation with avant-garde composer William Basinski .

Click here for more information on the Pop Symposium, taking place September 14-17, 2017.

Creator of the widely acclaimed album set Disintegration Loops (2002), Basinski is an intuitive composer of ambient electronic music who works work magnetic tape loops to access dreamlike acoustic spaces.  He once described himself as investing incredible amounts of meditative energy towards improvisation and locating the “timeless, amniotic bubble” of sound one could float within. A bubble is an apt metaphor for these sounds: expansive, swirling voids that physically emanate from thin slips of magnetic tape.

Among other topics, I’m looking forward to this opportunity to speak with Basinski about the physicality of sound, both in the sound producing bodies (the magnetic devices he charms into circles and feedback-song) and the receptive media bodies (us leaky humans).

Take a listen below to Basinski’s soundcloud account in order to experience his processes in tape loop and delay systems, found sounds, feedback, and shortwave radio static.