I got the idea of working with a spring-reverb after seeing Laetitia Sonami (http://sonami.net) performing in Steims Summerparty 2013. She was playing on a self-made instrument and we were watching her very first performance with it. The Lady Web is a spring-reverb taken apart and mounted on a metal ring. She performed together with James Fei, who was live manipulating the raw sound. http://res.marcodonnarumma.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/marco-donnarumma_steim-summer-party-2013_sonami-fei.jpg

I was immediately fascinated by the instrument and decided to explore this setup as an alternative platform for a audio-visual project. It is still to early to make a game with it, but what is here now can perhaps be conceptualized as a toy, or just the very early stages of something game-like.

To me, the springs are an interesting instrument. The raw data input is incredibly rich and nuanced, which is evident immediately when listening to it. The springs have a quality almost as if they are alive; they are hard to control and interacting with them is a constant exploration and uncertainty is featured over precision.

I imagined that it could be interesting to work further on this technology to explore its potential as a game controller. I find that working with uncertainty on a very basic material level of a game interface is an interesting contrast to how interfaces of games are commonly referred to as controllers and reflect an assumption that an interface gives you control and precision over the technology.

The PS3-controller for instance has two sticks and 15 buttons, including start, select and PS. The buttons are binary; either on or off. The stick is slightly more complicated to navigate, however, after a little practice to know how to move it for high precision.

I am excited about with the springs as a controller because, in contrast to the buttons, it brings in more details of touching, squeezing, pulling and almost-touching. We might call this the “noise” (Menkman 2011) or the “mess” (Law 2007) that is filtered out by many of the other game controllers.

What is the need of diversity game platforms?

As with methods for good and long-lasting research (Law 2007) I would like to suggest that interfaces – and perhaps technology in general – function as an “simultaneous enactment of presence and absence” (p. 3). It assumes and recognizes only a certain world, politics, ideologies and ontology while other are repressed and “othered”. Building alternative technologies is for me an exploration of methods, or practices, which recognize and represent different aspects of mess.

It has recently become a central debate in game culture community that it lack diversity in demographic culture. Digital games throughout its history has been developed for and by a certain demographic; white self-identifying male gamers, a type of players with highly specialized bodily techniques (Foucault 1988) developed throughout histories of playing games. The rise of casual games, art games and game jams has served as invitations for different demographics with a different set of skills, bodies and history than the typical gamer-body. Still the diversity of people involved in game making and game consumption is sparse. Dominating game patterns of competition, requirements for high literacy on classic game conventions and requirements for managing the controllers well still works as mechanics of exclusion and inclusion.

Jonathan Sternes analysis of the mp3 (2010) illustrates how a piece of technology holds certain assumptions, delegations and ideologies. Rosa Menkman’s manifesto of glitch studies (2011) considers computers as closed assemblages based on a “genealogy of conventions”, where each glitch shows a moment in which these conventions are revealed, broken and bend. This points to considering a technology as a manifestation of the culture which has created it. As far as game platforms are created by developers who represents the white self-identifying male gamers so are the platforms also inviting and representing the culture of a rather narrow part of the worlds population.

Exploring ways of creating diverse and alternative game platforms is my my attempt to create a different invitation to under-represented and silenced groups of people in our society as well as representing a different set of cultural ideologies, assumptions and conventions. It is developing methods of representing the noise and mess that are often filtered and excluded and it is developing methods of inviting silenced and repressed voices.

How I work with “mess”?

The following is a write up of my practice when working with the springs as interface.

Hardware:

The first step of the project was to reproduce Sonami’s Ladies Web. I ordered the reverb-spring online, got the right cable and an external sound card that feeds sound input to my computer. The first exciting step was to assemble this kit and plug it into Ableton Live to listen and manipulate the sounds. The sounds are fascinating in themselves and already at this state I was quite happy with my new instrument. This was a huge success considering the percentage of things I make, break and modify to be working the way I imagined is very little.

I wanted the springs more accessible so I found a way to take out the crucial components of the box. This was difficult, I almost age up on the project, but managed after much hassle and help from a friend. The project was all dismantled and next step was finding a way to put it all together again.

I liked the metal bar as it will give me something to later attach the controller to objects. I imagine to take the project out in the woods and attach the metal bar to a tree and extend the springs to other trees and elements in the nature. I tried assembling the other parts onto this metal bar. During the dismantling process the fragile components had been violated to an extend that something always broke while I was fixing something else. While repairing and involuntarily breaking different parts of it my motivation and believe in the project dropped. As I had partly promised at least myself to make something out of this for  this boot camp, I brought it to a convention with my friends to work on it there. I spend the whole day breaking and repairing the little instrument for in the end realizing that the problem was not the hardware. While Audacity would not recognize the “strange” data input, Unity, a software for developing and prototyping games, had no problem recognizing the input as sound.

Software:   

The Software that turned out to be working with my instrument is a game engine I have only recently been introduced to. This was a welcomed chance for me to keep learning. The software is ambitious, developers tend to stay within their niche area as the scope of what is possible is rather overwhelming. I stay within the scripting/programming as that is what I am most comfortable with.

I was lucky that one of my friends was working on graphics creating butterflies with a slightly disturbing flesh texture. She let me use these in my project.

First step was to create an “audio recorder” which “listens” to the right sound card and transports the data into the program. The audio recorder also analyses the sound and gives 4 variables I can manipulate visuals with. I have a different object which serves as a “sound generator”. The sound generator generates one variable with which I can manipulate the audio. I found the raw audio input interesting enough to be left almost un-touched, for now at least.

On the “scene” are 3 different kinds (species) of butterflies. Each is an experiment in working visually with rich data input. The first three experiments are rather simple. One reacts to the volume and behaves after the delta volume (differences in volume) in a 1:1 scale. The second reacts both to the frequency with responding size to the delta volume and simultaneously alter its size to the frequencies in accidence with the frequencies. The third “species” takes a certain frequency as its trigger and then slowly fades  away.

At the Saturday afternoon, the end of the convention, I was expected to present the project on stage. As what seems to be expected, the piece broke right before the presentation. While a friend helped me on stage holding to pieces together, a third wire broke of and one of the three springs fell off. The instrument has had a fragile life until now. Although all the broken and fixed joints are part of the piece as it is, it is not all the broken moments that has been embraced as either beauty or art.

Further work:

This is the very early stage of the visual exercise. I will stay a bit longer at the process of finding ways of visualizing (and getting to know) the input. I would like more appealing and complex behaviour of the butterflies before I start working on dependencies. Dependencies is the first step towards making a system, and the dependencies are gonna tell me which game system – if any – will happen. The project has to grow and while growing it shows what can possibly happen and what is potentially interesting. In my projects plans are only for amusement, they keep my motivation up. In my experience settling on plans in projects of such new technologies with a high degree of uncertainties, noise and unknown mess only leads to failure and great frustration.

Foucault, Michel. Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. Univ of Massachusetts Press, (1988).

Law, John. Making a mess with method. Sage, (2007).

Sterne, Jonathan. Rearranging the Files: On Interpretation in Media History. The Communication Review 13:1 (2010): 75–87.

Menkman, Rosa. Glitch studies manifesto. Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam (2011): 336-347.