Peter Weibel

Data Music

A woman has headphones on and plays a simulated guitar on a large screen. A fragmentary image of several people dressed in green is projected.
Artists
Peter Weibel
Title
Data Music
Year
2016
Medium / Material / Technic
interactive sound installation; music stand, photography, strings, screen, computer, loudspeakers software development Nikolaus Völzow sound and interface design Derek Hauffen commissioned by DIGITAL SYNESTHESIA

The installation consists of a music stand with a photo of a guitar on it. The strings of the guitar, though, are real and connected to a computer on which several samples are stored. You are invited to pluck the strings, which are both the notation and the instrument. As the music is stored physically as data in the computer, you perform music via an interface, which is programmed by an algorithm.In addition, your performance is recorded by a Kinect camera and displayed on the screen on the wall. As the images of the performance are data, the configuration of the visual data can easily be influenced by the configuration of the acoustic data. Sound and image are synchronized with each other. Thus, when you are in front of the music stand, you see your mirror image displayed on the screen. The moment you start performing with the music stand, your image distorts into a flow of visualized acoustic data.