The End of Hearing: project website

Hoorrrrray!
After much too long spent on too much stuff, I finally managed to set up a proper project website that I can be satisfied with. Visit The-End-of-Hearing.org and see for yourself!



On the new project website you can both watch 'The End of Hearing' film in HD and see the photos in big format. There are two full stories and the Science Fiction Prototype available for read. Finally, there is a section mentioning all the recent, current and upcoming news about the project. I promise to keep it up-to-date, so make sure to keep in touch!

The-End-of-Hearing.org

The End of Hearing: interacting in the show

The MACD show at the Rochelle School has been attracting great number of people and it is hard to find a moment during the day to do anything else than offering my time in the gallery to the visitors. And it's great! The show is widely praised and especially our Digital Media sector receives some good attention.

The private viewing night was very busy. A lot of visitors were queuing to enter the first floor with our digital and interactive presentation. My work received some publicity both online (https://twitter.com/#!/marekkultys) and real-life while having a number of interesting conversations. Thanks to my sister, Dotty, I managed to conduct over 30 "Hearing Trade-off" tests on that one night. Also a big thank you to Mela (melayerka.com) who took all those photos for me. Well done!

The End of Hearing: feedback #1

I am currently conducting the Rochelle Experiment—a feedback session in the CSM MACD final show.

After explaining my scenarios to the audience, I am giving out a questionnaire with a variety of semi-open questions. I am aiming at collecting 60 feedbacks and presenting it in the CS'11 conference in Nottingham in July this year.

The End of Hearing: private view & friends and family viewing

"The End of Hearing" is now comfortably set up in the Rochelle School in Schoreditch, London. The whole Digital Media section is placed on the first floor of the gallery, making it a nice and cosy place to be around all animating and prototyping mates.

The private view will take place today at 18:00. You need an invitation to get in, so probably if you got one, you'd be considering to come. If this is the case, please do not hesitate any longer—come and see the amazing work of the last year of the good and old MACD.



If, however, you have not been blessed with a magic invitation, please feel free to come on any other day between June 15th and 23rd, 10:00 - 18:00. I will be there every day conducting my experiment (the Rochelle Experiment), and I will be happy to give you a tour around the place.

Another piece of good news: my parents have decided to visit me during the weekend and they will see my work at the "friends and family" opening. Horray!

Art & Science Meeting, Gdańsk 2011

I'm just leaving Gdańsk in northern Poland, where I managed to attend the Art & Science Meeting conference. I should have been sitting home preparing for the final show in less than two weeks time now, but I could not miss this kind of event in my own country.

And it was definitely worth it!

I visited three very interesting shows, each tackling a completely different aspect of art + science theme. "The Pleasure of Light" is a retrospection of work by F Malina and G Kepes work from fifty years ago. "Performing Data" by M Fleischmann and W Strauss reveals the very beginnings of virtual reality and computer interaction projects, as well as the creation of 3d spaces. All this when I was enjoying Mario Bros on my 64 colours Nintendo console in 1992! The last one is "Blue Morph" by V Vesna and J Gimzewski. It is a lovely piece really gaining from being placed in a gothic church.



"Blue Morph" by Vesna & Gimzewski.

In five hours time I will be boarding a plane back to London and going straight to work on my own projects. Nevertheless, I will have very positive memories from Gdańsk in May 2011!

Future Soundscapes: the question of how to show

Recently my efforts have revolved around very immaterial aspects of my work. I was writing scenarios for my submission for Creative Science 2011 conference in July in Nottingham. I hope to present my project and my working method there... In the conference paper I managed to fit only two out of three stories wrote for my final project (to be honest, it was also a bit of time issue—not only space). The stories got some narrative, some action, some characters and raise some questions—everything a science-fiction story for my purposes really needs. I will publish them as soon I manage to write the last one, which should not be too long from now.

Apart from that the stategy for presenting the project during the final show in Rochelle School in June has been giving me a nasty headache since the end of March. Eventually, I decided to do what needed to be done anyway and just go for it—I will stage a performance in the gallery. It should be something in between a scientific procedure designed to sell sophisticated products and a bureaucratic scheme introduced partly against peoples' will. I intend to ask my sister, Dotty, and my friend, Tine, who are actors and already took part in recording previous voice-overs for Future Soundscapes (interview on the tube).

With this performance approach I hope to achieve two things:
1] to convince people that things are going to change in the future in terms of our soundscapes and our hearing;
2] to get people to think about the future of our hearing and share their ideas about potential changes we might undergo.
This means my goal is to raise some awareness about hearing and receive some valuable feedback from people. Because during the "Work in Progress" show the feedback was rather unsatisfactory and I did not feel I managed to communicate the message across, this time I wish to interact with the audience on a different level. I will try to engage them through happening (a performative piece, where the audience is actively participating in the process). Having much better contact with the viewer (i.e.: more time, viewer's attention and resources to explain Hope this works), I hope to collect viable, detailed, personal and trustworthy feedback.

Another thing is that the theme of my project drifted away from soundscapes in general and therefore, should be renamed. Because currently it is all about our aural faculty, I decided to name it: "The End of Hearing". Scary, huh?

Future Soundscapes: show feedback

During the "Work in Progress" show I talked with people, discussed what they think about my project and the approach I chose for it, and also collected a number of ideas, with which people decided to respond to my four initial science-fiction scenarios. All of them concerned future.

These are the responses:

sound travel (surfing electroacoustic waves)

upbringing accompanied by sounds (audio), (also during pregnancy)

emotions triggers orgasms

brave new world

acoustic medicine

silent warfare (6.45pm)

an orchestrated, choreographed apocalypse

retro-active sound-reactive transport density

limit one sense, increase one sense

audio warfares (instead of military)

adaptation

healing + preservation of natural ability

sonic hygiene / beauty products

sound for digestion

sound gym

sound addiction - need to play ambient city sound to fall asleep

no more tools! Please! Let’s just deal / change the soundscape that exists?! LAWS against noise, haha? Or everything ‘just’ needs to be designed quiter? :)

sound encryption of thinking

soundophonic theater — replace cinema, providing a full sound experience

smart earplugs - that block out unwanted sounds but allow wanted sounds to be heard clearly

In my opinion, all these responses hold great potential for further exploration and development. But their main strength lies in their number. Therefore, I wish to use them and the general direction that they point at in the next part of my project—developing regular science-fiction scenarios and design objects with a story behind them. Having all that in plans, I am already thinking of various ways to go forward with my project and my general fictive approach towards designing. But this is a different story...

Digital Media on show

During our 'Work in Progress' show the Digital Media pathway received a really good response from the visitors. We were showing as a collective and had a small teaser to guide people to our geeky donjon.



It was conceived in an accidental overnight collaborative act by three of us. Coline B-N made the visuals, Jessika S put them to motion and Marek K created the music. You need to loop it and leave it playing for 8 hours non-stop to really get the flavour of our show space...

Future Soundscapes on show

A quick view on my 'Work in Progress' show setting in Shoreditch Town Hall.
In the room on the right you can also see Paul Ferragut's printers.

MACD 2011 'Work in Progress' Show

During sunny/rainy February of 2011, we have had our MACD 'Work in Progress' show in Shoreditch Town Hall basement. It was a big success and—most importantly—a great learning experience, thanks to which many trip and flops will be avoided during our MACD Final Show in June in the Rochelle School.

We curated our Digital-Media-pathway space, which met with lots of positive comments. I showed four scenarios for the Future Soundscapes project, which were printed and read. During the show I collected some valuable comments on each scenario and the overall approach to my project—it is going to be used during the development stage.