Void * Ambience is a telematic-based performance trio consisting of Joel Ong, Kavi, and Michael Palumbo.
Selected Performances:
Installation performance at the Fields Institute at the University of Toronto. With Debashis Sinha.
Online performance at the 2021 FACTT Festival Art & Science, organized by Cultura Cultivamos in Portugal.
Description:
void * ambience is a performance series that experiments with sound and video content that is developed by focusing on the topographies and networks through which these flow. Initiated during the time of COVID and social distancing, this project explores processes of information sharing, real-time performance and network communication protocols that contribute to the sustenance of our digital communities, shared experiences and telematic intimacies. We are interested in the multi-dimensionality and intersubjectivities of time folded in the instance of an online performance and its representations thereafter; and in the temporal phases of the pandemic, developing site-specific projects that connect to prevailing stages of lockdown in Toronto.
In this particular interaction void * ambience : Latency , we respond to the idea of the digital wilderness which describes the overabundance of online streams that we must filter through and comprehend. We place particular emphasis on exploring latency, an issue native to telecommunications, emphasizing its affordance as a novel parameter of telematic composition. We use the platform-agnostic data exchange interface ‘allhands’ developed by Palumbo that facilitates bi-directional transmission of open sound control data over the web and provides real-time network statistics such as ping times and GPS information.
We interpret ping times as a function of distance between computers and affected by network dynamics, and map this feature into reverbs that are convolved with the original sound signal. In addition we perform rhythms, spatialization and reverberation of the soundscape through live coding and analog patching. In visual delivery, the virtual map's second layer depicts locations, ping data, and latencies. It then overlays it on top of the actual world map, signifying the multiplicities of connections that weave between us in physical and virtual domains.
Our current iteration expands the network from the performers (3 computers) to a selection of collaborating, consenting audiences who can opt in to connect their computers through allhands. In so doing, these performances not only reference the lines that allow us to transmit information from one side of the world to the other, they also explore the interpenetration of these lines, from the entanglement of viewership with network stability, to the collaborative nurturing of a digital body that exists within the infrastructures and invisible layers of the Internet.
In so doing, these performances not only reference the lines that allow us to transmit information from one side of the world to the other, they also explore the interpenetration of these lines, from the entanglement of viewership with network stability, to the collaborative nurturing of a digital body that exists within the infrastructures and invisible layers of the Internet.