What does it mean to disconnect from time and space, from our bodies, when communicating and making?

“Timeless” is a meditation on that question, refracted through the ideas of a number of thinkers from various backgrounds, and interspersed with a mysterious, glowing object in the form of a regular polyhedron. (This alien device seems to act as both mirror and unspeaking narrator.) The work of filmmaker Gabriel Shalom and designer Patrizia Kommerell, “Timeless” is an immersion into the contradictions of digital expression. With thinkers from cyberpunk futurist Bruce Sterling to game theorist Mary Flanagan, it holds a critical, visionary mirror to our electronic world.

What keeps that from being dull or overly abstract is that the film gets intimate with its speakers, all of us citizens of this new electronic nowhere. Answers are lofty at times, but they also speak to highly personal moments of vulnerability and uncertainty, that instant when it isn’t clear what will happen next in our cyborg existence. And that makes this film, to me, required watching for anyone who expresses themselves with our current generation of technology.

I’m also featured in this film, which, believe me, was more an impediment to writing about it than not. Actually, after watching it, I was at last struck with a revelation: I was more comfortable with my words than the appearance of myself on the video, and most satisfied still by far with my musical presence in the piece. (Two tracks in the background, in their entirety, are my own.) That musical avatar was the one I found least unsettling. Perhaps that explains why I do what I do.

I want to thank Gabriel and Patrizia for their support and stimulating imagination as video/design essayists. We shot this at the STRP Festival in Eindhoven, whose assemblage of digital works spanning the Netherlands’ history and beyond was a perfect background. I’m also indebted to Platoon, the Berlin/Korea-based creative network that helps make or reinforce these sorts of connections regularly. The show at commissioning gallery space MU, too, collected works that connected with the notion of materiality in inventive and surprising ways. (I’ll revisit those works, as they’re an answer to some of the problems of disembodiment raised in the video.)

And, of course, Bruce Sterling gets in the best lines.

I’m curious to hear your reactions; this almost needs an espresso discussion group.

From the creators:

The digital settles in as background. We remember less and query more. Our identity play would be considered schizophrenic in the last century. We have more friends than ever before yet know new frontiers of isolation. The quantification of our experience haunts us in the form of a persistent history. And we are distracted more than we ever knew possible. These circumstances are paradoxically a description of the near future and a diagnosis of the current state of affairs. The truly timeless is redefined – it has transcended that which is classic; it has become that which is never finished.

Timeless
a video essay / design fiction by KS12

Directed and Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Designed by Patrizia Kommerell
Produced by KS12
Producer: Karen Cifarelli
Commissioned by MU, Eindhoven mu.nl
Curated by Angelique Spaninks
Production Assistant: Rob Versteeg ropski.nl

Interviews
(in order of appearance)

Bernhard Herrmann
Rafaël Rozendaal
Bruce Sterling
Peter Kirn
Jorien Kemerink
Markus Kayser
Elske van der Putten
Vivian van Gaal
Toby Barnes
Mary Flanagan

Ghost Box [the mysterious object you see -Ed.]

Concept and Design: KS12
Electronics: Philip Steffan
Manufacture: Günter Herrmann
3D Prototype Modeling: Mendel Heit
Fabrication Consultant: Fons Schiedon

STRP Artworks

Edwin van der Heide DSLE -2- (2011)
Marnix de Nijs Exploded Views 2.0 (2011)
Telcosystems 12_series (2010)
Digitale Werkplaats Bristlebots (2011)
Bart Hess Liquified (2011)
Fourcelabs Dance Engine (2011)

Music

Excerpt from “sketch_111229” by stra.
© 2011 Shingo Inao soundcloud.com/stra-1

“Anaxagoras” and “MeeBlip Landscape” by Peter Kirn
© 2011 Peter Kirn soundcloud.com/peterkirn

“Melted Rubber Soul” by Campfires
© 2011 Jeff Walls campfires.bandcamp.com

Special Thanks
Bernhard Herrmann
Helmut Seefeld

Shot on location in Eindhoven, NL during the STRP Festival 2011 and in Hofgeismar, Germany at the Günter Herrmann Lehrmittelfabrik

#timeless
ks12.net

http://ks12.net/2012/01/timeless/

http://ks12.net/portfolio/the-future-of-art/

48 hours. Nerd-chic tech from Kinect to Maker Bot. One space in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. DIYers in New York recently descended to complete an Art Hack Day. The resulting projects were Mr. Wizard-meets-science-fiction, made into reality, concocted using materials that extended to JELL-O and balloons. CDM contributor-at-large Sofy Yuditskaya was an organizer and there, and she covers the event for us. Nerdy, art, fantastic. Read on… -Ed.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of helping organize and participating in Art Hack Day, a 48-hour hackathon held at 319 Scholes, a non-disciplinary gallery and performance space in Brooklyn focusing on digital arts and experimentation. It was a seat-of-your-pants, DIY experience, from inception to closing party, a proto-institutional moment spun from the collective imaginations of artists, hackers, enablers and instigators. It was an example of what happens when people come together because they are inspired and passionate, each bringing what they can to the re-purposed warehouse to create a greater whole.

Paving the way for the event, the organization of Art Hack Day had a very organic feel to it — everyone (curators, staff, and participants) pulling what resources they had, and taking on the responsibilities they could muster, rather than executing a set, institutional program. There was a corporate presence in the form of sponsorship, but branding was kept to a minimum. Local businesses were called upon for all the meals.

Alexander Porter and Boss DJ, Sctratch MLing and PointClouding at the closing party.

This Art Hack is the third in New York, preceded by Eyebeam’s Art Hack Weekend and Rhizome’s Seven on Seven. Unlike those events, though, it had no concrete incentives and no winners. The incentive resided in creation, exhibition, play, partying, and participation. Walking down Scholes Street in industrial Brooklyn, it can be hard to imagine that going through an unassuming door would gain you entry into a space full of the techno-cultural industry, producing the funny, odd, subversive, and sometimes surreal.

There were too many projects to write about them all; I’ve selected a few that pertain to motion and sound, with some exceptions made for the visually arresting.

Scratch Markup Language

by fffff.at

Scratch Markup Language, seen previously on CDMusic, is a format for describing turntablism, a step towards a non-invasive way to record, analyze, share, and re-create scratch performances. Check out the website, and the project on GitHub.

Visual Mapping of Scratch ML

Glad to see that SML got put to use quickly: at the night of its premiere, a video game, “Aliens that Look like Skillrex,” was playing on the stage.

From the project page:

The backstory: Aliens are trying to communicate with us through dubstep, we interpret these actions as hostile and go on the offensive. Destroy the aliens.

How it works: The DJ controls the boss ship. We are receiving the ScratchML data in realtime from the turntables, so his/her actions directly affect the bullet patterns and movement of the ship. As the player you can dodge and shoot back. It’s a head to head battle of player vs. DJ. Others can participate as well: the Twilio integration allows people to text a number if the DJ sucks, and their text will appear on screen and damage the boss ship.

A video of Joe Salina killing the DJ at the closing party:

Bot Zoo

by Paul Christophe

Bot Zoo was installed in the bathrooms. It took me a long time to figure out how and why there seemed to be a disembodied voice reciting absurdist poetry, all from within an aural space I knew from studying the plans of the space did not exist. As it turns out: “[Spam] Bots are creatures that evolve along with technology. They are ignorant of the messages they carry but it is the only way they can proliferate.”

Point, Line, Surface

A quadrophonic installation of sound and video, “Point, Line, Surface” plays with the idea of the playhead in audio and the scan line in video processing. We have built on top of and transcended the mathematics of computing, but that mathematics is at its core discrete and linear. This installation looked into an aural, visual, and spatial experience of that fact.

The playheads of both were driven by pix_openCV’s library for Pd [Pure Data], using blob detection to determine from where in the image or waveform each playhead should start scanning, at what rates, and when they should jump back to restart the loop. The piece ended with a techno-occult summoning dance in the wee hours of the morning. Appropriate to such matters of the techno-occult, of course, all camera memories were full or batteries dead by that time.

robotcowboy

Dan Wilcox ported his Robot Cowboy project to run on ofxPD and ofxLUA on an iPad.

Dan Wilcox explains:
“My old project was about embodiment of computer-aided performance through wearable computing; now that tech has caught up with mobile machines, I’m updating the system. Now I can do wearable as well as mobile and utilize the touchscreen but, as before, it’s not about a single output, but a platform for exploring ideas in performance and storytelling concepts.”

At Art Hack Day, an alpha version of the new robotowboy 2.0 music system was developed as an app. Dan built the app using OpenFrameworks, ofxPd for sound, and ofxLua for visuals on an iPad. Combined together, they basically make something like RjDj [the https://github.com/danomatika/robotcowboy

http://robotcowboy.com/news/robotcowboy-2-0/

No Clipping

“No Clipping” is a lovely mood video piece by James George and Alexander Porter. It took advantage of the new, unpowered Xtion PRO (Kinect-like sensor made by PrimeSense and Asus) to go mobile. They overlaid input from the sensor and a DSLR, re-shifting the camera angles in post for a most uncanny effect, walking through walls, thanks to the undifferentiated nature of the point cloud.

The new MakerBot [3D printer] was present, showing off its new bio-degradable plastic and enlarged replicator. The attending representative of MakerBot Industries suggested extending the rails on the vertical axis, allowing an even-larger print area — just throwing that out there to you makers!

Balloons

Nova Jiang’s and Olaf Sundstrom’s hand-coated MakerBot prints in latex to create balloons. The latex was mostly too thick for a balloon, but looks extremely organic, a clean, chemical growth betraying the hand on top of lovingly-printed, machine-generated forms.

Laser Cut human head covered in latex

Finally I will leave you with Jello City by Hethre Contant, in her words.

The Jello City was the result of tremendous urban planning. Its state-of-the-art buildings, a marvel of modern architecture, were networked with a powerful radio station built with Exitrip technology [http://www.exitrip.org/ ].This radio station served as a two-way communication apparatus for the city, providing both education and entertainment. Nikola Tesla once visited the Jello city to test out his Earthquake Generator (recreated for Art Hack through a metal plate and a powerful speaker) (http://www.rexresearch.com/teslamos/tmosc.htm), which caused the Jello City to jiggle and collapse. All that remained of the Jello City was its radio station, broadcasting its loud emergency alert warning back to the collapsed city. Among the boisterous tone the following lesson could be heard, “No matter how much you plan, everything will be destroyed.”

This message surreptitiously describes the nature of the art hack. You plan, you prepare, you build, you destroy, and in the end, you are left with something for which you could not have imagined.

Brainwaves.

Nearly as unique and irreplaceable as the men and women who designed them, the analog machines behind early animation produced in idiosyncratic circuitry pre-digital visuals. The fingerprints of those designs are all over familiar animation from decades past. And one of the most extraordinary of those machines must certainly be the Scanimate. Built by the Computer Image Corporation of Denver, Colorado starting in the late 60s, only eight models were made, of which just one survives. That one remaining unit is in Asheville, North Carolina, near the home of Moog Music and our friend Chris Stack at Experimental Synth. So, of course, we wind up seeing this analog-powered machine driven by Control Voltage from a Moog, at top.

What makes the Scanimate worth revisiting above all else is the fact that it was real-time – pumping out a consistent 60 frames per second, or more than a lot of the digital devices we see today. As a real-time animation device, in fact, it still edges out a lot of the sophisticated digital tools today, from those employed by pros down to the “render it first” workflows of software like After Effects. I wish, indeed, that computer software designers would look back at how these tools worked; even though the hardware is almost impossible to find, the design notions introduced here still could inform new software. They may seem even more relevant today than when they were new, particularly with software’s ability to quickly produce new tools.

Do watch the video here, but you’ve seen the output of this gadget before:
The Electric Company, Logan’s Run, Star Wars, Sesame Street, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and countless station idents and commercial spots used the tech.

I could say more, but there’s enough information at the site of the remaining machine’s owner, one Dave Sieg, to ensure you don’t get any more work done all week. So I’ll leave it to Dave – and let the Scanimate speak through its eye candy.

Productivity, die!
http://scanimate.com/

Here’s a fantastic vintage news report on the tech, as seen through the eyes of the time:

I’ll close with what I think may be one of the best visualizations of periodic waveforms and wave physics I’ve ever seen. Note to self – I need this a lot.

And the rest is history.

To skip to the punchline: Final Cut Pro X appears to at last do multi-camera editing, and do it right, as seen in the video posted by our friend Nilay at The Verge.

To anyone who read deep conspiracy theories into the release of Final Cut Pro X, perhaps it’s time for a gentle reminder. When building massive, complex tools, sometimes developers get it wrong – even if they happen to be Apple. Final Cut Pro was desperately in need of a rebuild, constructed as it was on deprecated, 32-bit-only libraries. That rebuild, charitably, didn’t go as smoothly as some might have hoped. Final Cut Pro X was missing critical features and adopted a user interface paradigm for editing and file management that at best required adaptation and at worst left users looking for alternatives.

But I’ll go out on a limb here and say anyone who believes Apple wanted to alienate their pro market is simply off their rocker. Now, the effect may have been to do just that, but it was unintentional.

It was also clear from the release of Final Cut Pro X that some of those features were to be added back – made even clearer when Apple representatives publicly said as much explicitly in the days following X’s release.

To put it another way: Final Cut Pro X was bold, entirely new, and just plain unfinished. Some folks out there are using it, but in its initial release, Final Cut faced stiff competition not only from rivals like Premiere, but from Apple’s own, trusted Final Cut Pro 7.

With 10.0.3, we get a first look at what a finished version of Final Cut Pro X might be like. New in this version come both features that users found sorely missing, and some new ideas that we haven’t seen in desktop Mac editors before. In brief:

• More complete XML import/export
• Multi-camera editing, with up to 64 cameras and independent resolution, framerate, etc.
• Enhanced chroma-keying (especially nice, as you really don’t want to have to move over to Motion or another tool to do this)
• Sync via audio
• Import layered Photoshop graphics.
• Monitoring over Thunderbolt (this starts to get really, really cool – especially on those Mac laptops

Apple seems not to be content just to add back those missing features, but to do them better than competitors’ implementations. Let us know if you’re testing 10.0.3, and we hope to do the same.

But wait — there’s more.

Reconnect media and exchange files with third-party applications using a robust relink interface. Select media that has been moved or modified, or locate clips that have been transcoded, trimmed, or color graded by third-party tools. Then easily relink to your Final Cut Pro X project or Event.

Yes, by “robust,” this really means “now actually usable.” Media relink was for me the biggest deal-breaking issue in X, causing maddening file management headaches as Apple tried, apparently, to reinvent how locating files work. I’m eager to try this particular fix more than any other.

Also, crucially, Apple is now pointing to a third-party migration tool for FCP 7 users in the App Store:

7toX for Final Cut Pro brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects. The lightweight application is simple to use, with drag-and-drop support and progress information. 7toX translates important metadata from your Final Cut Pro 7 Project — including bins, clips and sequences — to a new Event in Final Cut Pro X with the highest fidelity of any translation application for Final Cut Pro. In addition, the application provides clear, detailed reporting after every transfer.

In a relatively rare move, Apple even has a page explaining what they’ve fixed improved:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/software-update.html

And check out the migration tool:
7toX for Final Cut Pro

Like eerily-lush alien vegetation, Sougwen’s visual design for for Sepalcure’s tour blooms out of drifting shadows. Through some mysterious connection, they unearth some of the dream-like warmth you could feel from Sepalcure’s music, the collaboration by Machinedrum and Praveen.

Having known Sougwen and followed her work for some time, they also manage to assimilate the intricate textures of her hand-drawn work with the 3D digital world. See, previously, our coverage of that side:
Visuals for Shigeto Full Circle, and Reflections on Drawing by Hand

If you’re in Europe or the UK, there’s a chance this talented bunch are coming to your town. (Sadly, not mine this time.) But I also got the chance to talk to Sougwen about her process. Here’s are some quick answers:

Peter: Well, this looks brilliant.

Sougwen: Thanks! I was pleased with how that section of the visuals turned out.

So, these were rendered out first, then performed from the video clips live? How are they projected?

Rendered out first, yes; they’re a short selection in a larger body of clips I queue up in Modul8 using a MIDI controller.

They’re projection-mapped onto a suspended tryptych, which we performed at MUTEK Mexico. [The Mexico City MUTEK festival installment, from the fall, that is.]

And this is really part of a narrative, too, yes, for those who don’t get to see it?

[spoiler alert - skip ahead if you're watching this live and like surprises]

It’s part of the whole AV show — they [Sepalcure] begin with tracks called “Inside” and “Outside.”

So the piece begins as an exploration of this abstract interior: you see fragments at a kind of macro perspective. And at the end of the show, “Outside,” the view pulls out [to] the full model.

How did you build the models?

The shaders I made in Cinema 4D, employing the drawings I’ve developed over the past years to create a sort of husk over the models. As such, they become more sculptural and a framework off which I can play with lighting and perspective.

How did you translate from your drawings, from that medium, to the shaders?

It’s very simple, actually. I assign my drawings to an alpha channel.

Ah, you use them directly.

Yeah, as a husk of sorts.

Any plans for changes in the tour, things you’d like to work on next?

We’d love to further develop the setup — switch it up entirely, collaborate with different artists like Peter Kirn and Hai Nguygen (of Cinder).

I fantasize about being able to use gestural drawing as a controller for the visuals somehow.

Wait, who? That’s my cue to conclude the interview – I know what happens next may involve me. Thanks, Sougwen.

Those dates – the ones with stars should be visual shows, though not all shows are confirmed one way or another. Either way, I think you’ll enjoy the music.

02/02/2012 / Thursday / UK / Glasgow @ Sub Club
03/02/2012 / Friday / Netherlands / Amsterdam @ Trouw
**** 04/02/2012 / Saturday / UK / London @ Fabric
**** 08/02/2012 / Wednesday / Belgium / Opwijk @ Nijdrop
**** 09/02/2012 / Thursday / France Paris @ Batofar
**** 10/02/2012 / Friday / Italy / Torino @ ASTORIA
**** 11/02/2012 / Saturday / UK / Leeds @ Vox
12/02/2012 / Sunday / UK / Edinburgh @ Sneaky Pete’s

http://www.sepalcure.com/

And it’s worth seeing not only the motion visuals, but some of the hand-illustrated album art Sougwen did for this record, which I think was some of the finest, most sumptuous record art this year – I wish more records would come out looking like this.

The Rutt-Etra modular video synthesizer may be an early-1970s relic. But it’s an expressive visual instrument that seems even more contemporary and timeless today than when it first appeared. So it’s fitting that a new music video makes its intricate generated analog eye candy the star. Set to Nalepa’s track “Daytime,” the work – by noted visualists Benton-C Bainbridge and V Owen Bush – is an abstract visual poem. Clouds and planets drift out of the lacy, electronic tendrils. It’s a quick ticket to another world. (Watch it above; definitely watch it in “HD.”)

LA-based artist Steve Nalepa tells us:

We made this using a Rutt/Etra — actually [creator] Bill Etra’s personal Rutt/Etra. Benton and Owen are friends with him. There’s less than a dozen physical units left in the world, they only made 2 dozen originally.

Benton and Owen go by Glowing Pictures. Bunch of details of their history and stuff on their website. They just did One Step Beyond last week, VJing for Dirty Projectors. [One Step Beyond is the terrific New York party held on Central Park West at the American Museum of Natural History Rose Planetarium. It's one of those few places where you can always count on top-notch live visuals.]

Here’s the official description:

Daytime’s sinuous imagery was hand-crafted with the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer, an analog video instrument built in the early 70s. Like a TV from another dimension, the Rutt/Etra gives artists total control of the screen with knobs, oscillators and sound-responsive circuitry. It is a modular analog computer, programmed with patch chords.

The artists dedicate Daytime to the memory of Steve Rutt, co-inventor of the Rutt/Etra. Steve’s pioneering work as an engineer and entrepreneur helped create the media culture we now live in.

Music by Steve Nalepa.
Video co-created by Benton-C Bainbridge, V Owen Bush and Steve Nalepa.
Video produced at dvlabs in New York.

More information:
http://www.glowingpictures.com
http://www.stevenalepa.com

In case you happen to be in the LA area this Wednesday, Nalepa is playing the legendary downtown party Low End Theory. Alongside him is a 12-year-old child prodigy, Nalepa’s student Frankie, aka Subjection. It looks like a don’t-miss installment – lineup (and listening for all of us in the rest of the world, via SoundCloud):

Nalepa
http://soundcloud.com/nalepa

Subjection (Frankie, 12 years old)
http://soundcloud.com/subjectionmusic

Wednesday 2/1: NALEPA, SUBJECTION, and special guest plus residents
Daddy Kev, Nobody, Gaslamp Killer, Nocando and D-Styles

Airliner
2419 N Broadway
Los Angeles, California

18+ / $10 cover

https://www.facebook.com/events/172544392847555/

More Rutt-Etra Action

Benton also used the same Rutt-Etra synth on the video for “Staring At The Sun” by indie darlings TV on The Radio. Here it is:

processing to MadMapper via Syphon [Test] from espadaysantacruz studio on Vimeo.

Wish you could get Modul8 to take an input from some other tool, so that in addition to playing videos, you could “insert” custom visuals as you play?

Wish you could VJ with Processing – without giving up your VJ tool, too?

Wish you could use Processing with MadMapper for custom project-mapped generative visuals? (I’m going to pause at the tiny handful of people who know what that question means. If you’re still with me — congrats.)

Wish you could do all of this with some other combination of tools on the Mac? (Hint: if it supports Syphon, you can.)

Media artist Miguel V. Espada answers just how to make all of this goodness a reality in an exquisite set of easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions. Even the render-weary VJ could follow them. (Trust me – been there.)

In fact, I’m just about ready to go through every single one of the tutorials here. Kinect and Processing and Processing and Modul8 and Processing and projection mapping … Miguel, you’re our hero.

http://www.miguelespada.es/?cat=41 [thanks, Ilan!]

And all of these techniques promise to get better with time.

Hear that sound?

That’s the sound of visual sets getting done and people’s thesis work getting finished in time for spring and new, cool stuff happening the next time you go out and see visualists play. Mark my words. Start your engines.

Tutorial: Syphon input in Modul8 from instructions on Vimeo.

Vital public service announcement: Want to make sure this all continues to get better? Donate to the Syphon project. Despite the fact that this platform is utterly free to use for Mac users, and despite the fact that it has unleashed incalculable awesomeness on our community, I hear through the grapevine (or was that my HDMI cable?) that donations have been disappointing. Make that cease to be. For the price of just one coffee / Club Mate a day…

http://syphon.v002.info/

We’ve seen lots of fancy projection maps, sculptural creations, and elaborate architectural facades.

But sometimes, you just want to get rid of those awful seams when using a couple of projectors. And that can make all the difference.

Enter Blendy. This friendly, simple Mac tool sits between two visual applications and gets rid of those seams. It simply blends two textures together, combining them using the inter-app visual texture tool called Syphon (the one we’ve been raving about so much lately).

Using multiple projectors (two is just the beginning), ideally the same model for matched brightness, you can line up multiple images. These days, you can easily run out of a dual- or triple-head setup off even a single laptop. Set up a source – like Modul8 or ArKaos – and an output, like MadMapper. Blendy does the blending to the texture so the projection image looks continuous.

Blendy is under development, so your mileage may vary, but it’s exquisitely-well documented and, thanks to Syphon, works with loads of Mac visual apps. (DIY tools like Processing and OpenFrameworks now work these days, too, not just VJ apps.)

We’ll be watching. Try it out, let us know how you do, and by all means, document your kick-ass visualist setup with video and photos so you can show it off to the planet.

Superior Brazilian engineering:

http://blendy.studioavante.com/

Cost, for now, is €33 – with a special Brazilian discount.

With a nod to the forms and shapes of analog-generated imagery, but fully digital, here’s another digital type project. Buchstabengewitter (perhaps translated “Letterstorm”), by Ingo Italic, uses generative patching to imagine type that emerges from three-dimensional clouds of geometry. It comes to us from the research laboratory at Letters are my Friend, the Berlin type hub mentioned earlier today. Description:

Each letter is animated and morphed in vvvv. I tried to push the limits of a readable animated glyph. Each letter can be morphed into any glyph of the alphabet. That makes it easy to blend also several words into each other. Also 3 Posters where painted for the presentation at Letters Are My Friends in Berlin.

More letter experiments at:
lettersaremyfriends.com

2012
Ingo Italic
Letters Are My Friends
Berlin

True to their roots in metal, stone, and wood, typography is generally imagined to be fixed in place. It’s hardly the sort of thing you’d imagine transforming in time, the way you would a musical utterance. Yet the Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer defies that convention.

The 2007 project, designed by Rob Meek and Frank Müller, was recently exhibited at Berlin’s Letters Are My Friends. That makes it a perfect time to revisit the project, and its notion of typography as something fluid, malleable, and temporal in the way synthesized music would be.

From the description by Letters Are My Friends:

The combination of a custom built hardware controller and software generates new shapes and sounds out of pre-installed typeface vectors.

Like a real musical synthesizer, the Meek FM can shape and modify forms (+ sounds) with several parameters. This device shows that there are still a lot of untouched possibilies in realtime graphical instruments.

Music by Flying Lotus: Breathe Something, Stellar Star

meekfm.org/
lettersaremyfriends.com/

Letters Are My Friends is a story in itself. Located in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood, it’s a typographical gallery and laboratory. It comes a long way from dry type description pages on the Web. One feature is “a cosy showroom where letter relationships can be experienced in a physical space and progressive way.” There’s also a research lab and production label run by Ingo Italic and Bärbel Bold: “We share an interdisciplinary and experimental approach to services and products related to typography, motion- and interaction design.”

Expect a visit soon.