The project called Ringmind (born from discussions I had with Sociologist Bronislaw Szerszynski ) was an art-science collaboration between visual and sonic artists and academics from astrophysics, computer science, humanities and social sciences. It took as its focus the self-organising powers of planetary rings (such as those around Saturn) as researched by astrophysicists. The art project endeavoured to find ways to present these physics dynamics, visually and sonically, for diverse audiences, and using this to creatively stretch people’s ideas about the nature of consciousness and intelligence.
Our performance at Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin was a debut for the Ringmind audio/visual experience which attempted to address the "Life Forms" conference theme. It was also a unique performance in that the visuals and audio were live-coded using Processing and Supercollider.
The visual artist on this project Ashley James Brown , and myself worked closely with our small team of physicists to generate engaging animated graphics and data sonification/sound design. My own work employed various synthesis and spatial diffusion methods to realise the "sound" of planetary rings and moon systems that were displayed across an array consisting of 44 loudspeakers. There was also a text element to the performance narrated by Bronislaw that created a dramaturgy to demonstrate the workings of the Ringmind.