Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Eternity (2011, 43-second video)



Eternity connects Hollywood romance with the origin of the cosmos

NEW YORK, February 21, 2011 -- The Institute of Static Studies (ISS), a research arm of the New York-based creative production studio MomenTech, has released "Eternity," a 43-second video featuring the famous kiss on the beach between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity." At the end of that scene, the ocean waves morph into a recording of live television static from an old analog TV set.

Analog television static contains remnants of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), the oldest light in the universe, which was recently mapped by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). This probe found that the universe is around 13.73 billion years old, the most accurate age we have so far.

As experimental digital photographer and author Rick Doble noted in a June 13, 2009, interview on National Public Radio (NPR), "A small percentage of the static that you see on an analog television when it's tuned to an empty channel is from the Big Bang."

Intermixing Hollywood sentimentality, astrophysics and spirituality, "Eternity" continues the experiments into the nature of CMBR and cosmology by the Institute of Static Studies (ISS), a research arm of the New York-based creative production studio MomenTech, which is known for its ground-breaking "Field Experiment," in which participants are encouraged to imagine a field after inducing self-hypnosis aided by the staring into live analog television static for a period of 10 seconds.

"Field Experiment," which recalls Nam June Paik's 1974 sculpture/installation "TV-Buddha," will be included in a forthcoming research publication produced by the Dresden, Germany-based Behringer Institute for Medical Research.

"Eternity" is a 43-second video featuring the famous kiss on the beach between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity." At the end of that scene, the ocean waves morph into a recording of live television static from an old analog TV set.

Analog television static contains remnants of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), the oldest light in the universe, which was recently mapped by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). This probe found that the universe is around 13.73 billion years old, the most accurate age we have so far.

As experimental digital photographer and author Rick Doble noted in a June 13, 2009, interview on National Public Radio (NPR), "A small percentage of the static that you see on an analog television when it's tuned to an empty channel is from the Big Bang."

Intermixing Hollywood sentimentality, astrophysics and spirituality, "Eternity" continues the experiments into the nature of CMBR and cosmology by the ISS.

The Institute's "Field Experiment," which continues the explorations of Nam June Paik's 1974 sculpture/installation "TV-Buddha," will be included in a forthcoming research publication produced by the Dresden, Germany-based Behringer Institute for Medical Research.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Field Experiment #3




The Field Experiment goes online with Field Experiment #3, testing the ability of viewers to connect to the cosmos by "imagining a field" after staring into static

NEW YORK, January 13, 2011 -- MomenTech's Institute of Static Studies (ISS) has released Field Experiment #3, an online version of the original Field Experiment, an interactive, site-specific audiovisual project that explores meditation, self-hypnosis, the media and our cosmic origins by asking participants to imagine a field after having stared into live television static for a period of 10 seconds.

NOTE: Because it does not utilize live television static, Field Experiment #3 should not be used as a substitute for the original Field Experiment.

Anyone can participate in Field Experiment #3.

To conduct Field Experiment #3, simply follow these instructions:

1. Load video shown here or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yS34SydPEE
2. Select "Full Screen" option
3. Press "Play"
4. Stare directly into the center of the screen.
5. In your head, count slowly the numbers backwards from 10 to 1 (at the rate of approximately one number per second)
6. When you get to the number "1," close your eyes.
7. Imagine a field.

The amount of time the participant stays in this position, with eyes closed in front of the television, is up to the participant.

That completes one installation of Field Experiment #3.

COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION (CMBR)

"A small percentage of the static that you see on an analog television, when it's tuned to an empty channel, is from the Big Bang," notes artist Rick Doble, who uses analog television static in his work, in an NPR interview with Guy Raz.

"It's really the echo of the Big Bang. It's called cosmic microwave background radiation or CMBR. And this is being picked up by the television signal."


The Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations from the 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data seen over the full sky. The colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations, as in a weather map.
(image: NASA/WMAP Science Team).



Raz: So, this echo from billion of years ago...
Doble: Right...
Raz: ...is still echoing...
Doble: ...like 13 billion years ago.
Raz: ...is communicating to us through terrestrial television.

MEDIATION & MEDITATION

In a world where digital television is the norm, the ability to access live static is getting more and more difficult. It can also be argued that in a world increasingly inundated with information, it is increasingly harder to find moments of quiet reflection.

Information/media overload, meditation, hypnosis, and the cosmos are all themes explored in Field Experiment, which recalls Nam June Paik's 1974 sculpture/installation "TV-Buddha," in which an antique statue of Buddha "watches" itself on a closed-circuit television.

But the Buddha is also being "watched" by the video camera. As Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google, said, "Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better. Where that leads is uncertain."


Nam June Paik. TV Buddha, 1974
closed circuit video installation (video camera, monitor) with bronze sculpture


In Field Experiment, Paik's mediated gaze shifts from the other (Buddha/no ego) to the self (ego) and back again (Nirvana), as viewers are invited to participate in the experiment, simply by standing in front a television displaying pieces of information, some of which have taken 13.7 billion years to travel from the beginning of time (i.e., the Big Bang) to Earth at the present time.

Viewers, then, become vessels that channel the Universe's earliest signals of activity through their mental ability to, quite prosaically, "imagine a field" through the use of self-hypnosis.


It is relatively easy to meditate in a quiet environment. But one's true ability to meditate is demonstrated by meditating in the most chaotic of environments -- to "imagine a field" through the static.

Wikipedia defines meditation as "any of a family of techniques that involve the self-induction of a mode of consciousness in order to realize some benefit."
For the deepest meditation, one has to not only focus on one object, but to make the awareness itself be that object. This way the focus of consciousness is turned back to the self. In this sense, Field Experiment might simply be used as a meditation technique.

However, any successful installation of Field Experiment also offers a way to (re)connect with the origins of the cosmos in the form of the cosmic microwave background radiation that is readily accessible through an analog television that is tuning in a "non-channel."

--

NOTES

Producers of The Field Experiment are encouraged to gather the following data, but it is not required for a successful installation:

1. the age/gender of each participant
2. the length of time each participant stays in front of the television with their eyes closed
3. the size of the viewing screen
4. the decibels (db) of the audio of the level (i.e., the volume level of the static)
5. any post-experiment participant comments


This data can be displayed to the public in conjunction with the installation of The Field Experiment, and can also be sent directly to the Institute of Static Studies for analysis.

For more information, email MomenTech/Institute of Static Studies:
m01123581321345589144@gmail.com

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi


Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi Uses the Sounds of the Cosmos to Create an Abstract Synthesis of Art and Science

Hidden Motion Sensors in an Immersive, Multi-sensory, Single-Room Environment Trigger NASA Audio Recordings of the Sun, Earth and Planets

"The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe." -- Hazrat Inayat Kahn (1882-1927), founder of the Sufi Order in the West

NEW YORK, JANUARY 11, 2011 -- MomenTech has released plans for Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi ("Symphony of the Cosmos No. 1: Master of the Game"), an interactive, immersive, site-specific, multi-sensory, single-room installation/environment that is dominated by a glowing, translucent, room-filling sphere, the entire surface of which is covered by live analog television static.

Hidden throughout the room are motion sensors that trigger various sounds recorded by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) from the cosmos, such as the sounds emanated by Jupiter that were recorded by the Voyager I spacecraft. As visitors move through the room -- which is lit solely by the static of the central sphere -- their motions activate the sensors, creating a spontaneous "live" performance using the sounds of the universe.

Making connections between art, music, science, literature, spirituality and our cosmic origins, Magister Ludi -- the first installment of a series of Kosmossinfonien -- presents an imagined version of the mysterious, eponymous game in Hermann Hesse's magnum opus Das Glasperlenspiel ("The Glass Bead Game").

MASTER OF THE GAME

The work's epithet, Magister Ludi (Latin for "master of the game"), comes from an alternate publication title of Das Glasperlenspiel. This phrase can also be seen as a pun: lud- is a Latin stem meaning both "game" and "school."


Book cover of Das Glasperlenspiel by Hermann Hesse (Fretz & Wasmuth Verlad AG, first edition, 1943)

"I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, every symbol and combination of symbols led not to single examples, experiments and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge," wrote Hermann Hesse in Das Glasperlenspiel.

"Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, to be nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling an exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created."

According to Wikipedia, "The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date, centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century." The "exact nature [of the Glass Bead Game] remains elusive...The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics."

Magister Ludi is MomenTech's interpretation of Hesse's Glass Bead Game, presenting an interactive and meditative "game" that invites viewers to move around the room, triggering the sounds of the cosmos through hidden motion sensors. This immersive installation exists as a highly "abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences" as it presents the recorded sounds of celestial bodies -- and the Big Bang itself -- assembled as a living and breathing improvisational symphonic work, created by a new creator -- the Self (i.e., visitors/participants).

Suggesting the primacy of the Self (as both participant in and author of the sounds of the cosmos), Magister Ludi shows that the "master of the game" is just as much the divine "One" as it is the ego-self, and stands as an expression of a simple concept that is a scientific fact: We are stardust.

However, unlike the Glass Bead Game, in which "players make deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics," Magister Ludi offers players an opportunity to make deep connections between related topics (e.g., art, music, science, the cosmos, spirituality, etc.)

Time Magazine called Hesse's enigmatic game a "synthesis of human learning, which, in its subtlety, resembled both the chess game of master players and the improvisation of great musicians." Magister Ludi could be similarly described.

SOUNDS OF THE COSMOS


Audiowave of solar sounds (One Mode: l=1,n=20, nu=2.94-3.0 mHz) generated from 40 days of Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) data and processed by Alexander G. Kosovichev. (source: Solar Oscillations Investigation in the W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory of Stanford University)

The sounds of Magister Ludi are comprised of recorded sounds produced by the Sun, the Earth and the planets that have been collected by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and MomenTech's Very Low Frequency (VLF) Receiver.

In addition to these recorded sounds, Magister Ludi also includes live television static, the contents of which contain remnants of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) that were formed around 13.7 billion years ago at birth of the known Universe, the Big Bang.

The behavior of CMB photons moving through the early universe is analogous to the propagation of optical light through the Earth's atmosphere. Water droplets in a cloud are very effective at scattering light, while optical light moves freely through clear air. Thus, on a cloudy day, we can look through the air out towards the clouds, but can not see through the opaque clouds. Cosmologists studying the cosmic microwave background radiation can look through much of the universe back to when it was opaque: a view back to 400,000 years after the Big Bang. This “wall of light“ is called the surface of last scattering since it was the last time most of the CMB photons directly scattered off of matter. When we make maps of the temperature of the CMB, we are mapping this surface of last scattering (source: NASA)

A wide variety of tonal variations have been recorded in outer space. "Sometimes they sound like ocean waves or like popcorn popping," writes Prachi Patel of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in the NASA article, Tuning in the Sounds of Space. "They can even sound like a hissing snake."

One distinct group of sounds featured in Magister Ludi is the unique series of recordings created from NASA's Voyager I and Voyager II missions as the spacecraft traveled around the planets and moons in the Solar System.



The Voyager 1 robotic space probe was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for 33 years, 4 months, and 5 days, the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. It carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from the people (e.g. the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States, and the children of the Planet Earth) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a variety of music. (image source: NASA)

"The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from solar winds and planetary magnetosphere create soundscapes which are at once utterly alien and deeply familiar to the ear," according to an All Music Guide review of the 1990 album NASA Voyager I & II: Space Sound Recordings.

"Some of these sounds are hauntingly like human voices singing, giant Tibetan bowls, wind, waves, birds and dolphins. Voyager has left our solar system forever. The sounds on these recordings will never be made again in our lifetime."

MomenTech's Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi brings these sounds to life within the context of a sensory immersive site-specific installation that is fully interactive.

SPHERICAL HARMONICS

Throughout human history, most known societies have reported of a "universal sound" or something akin to spherical harmonics, which are used to compute the atomic orbital electron configurations as well as representation of gravitational fields, geoids, cosmic microwave background radiation and the magnetic fields of planetary bodies and stars.


Visual representations of the first few spherical harmonics. Red portions represent regions where the function is positive, and green portions represent regions where the function is negative. (source: Wikipedia)

In ancient Indian metaphysics, this "universal harmony" is known as Nāda, the spiritual sound that fills the entire cosmos. With this yogic system, there are two categories of music -- anahata (internal music) and ahata (external music).

Within the room that houses the installation of Magister Ludi, the cosmic ahata sounds mix and mingle with the anahata sounds created by the breathing of the individuals experiencing the piece.

THE ONE

Plato referred to spherical harmonics at the end of the 13th book of The Laws: "Every figure, every row of numbers and every assemblage of harmonious sounds, and the accordance of the cycles of the celestial bodies and the One as an analogy for all which is manifesting itself must become exceedingly clear to him who is searching in the right manner. That of which we speak will however come to light if one strives to recognize all, while not losing sight of the One. It is then that the connecting link of the ones named will come to light."

In bringing the aural atmosphere of our larger cosmic surroundings into close focus, Magister Ludi helps to bring participants in harmony with the Chinese concept of "Tao" (the way, or path).

Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi marks a significant development in MomenTech's specific exploration into the nature of static and the larger ongoing investigation of the origin of the cosmos. Earlier works in this line of inquiry include The Field Experiment and The Field Experiment Osnabrück.

For more information on Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi, please contact MomenTech at m01123581321345589144@gmail.com.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Field Experiment Osnabrück


MomenTech Expands Their Field Experiment with the Large-Format Field Experiment Osnabrück, Bringing a Live Piece of the Big Bang to Lower Saxony

NEW YORK, December 24, 2010 (updated January 2, 2011) -- MomenTech has released plans for Field Experiment Osnabrück, a large-scale work in the public sphere based on their Field Experiment installation, an interactive, site-specific audiovisual project that explores meditation, self-hypnosis, the media and our cosmic origins by asking viewers to imagine a field after having stared into live television static for a period of 10 seconds.

Field Experiment Osnabrück re-situates the original room-sized installation design of Field Experiment, projecting live television static on a large screen behind a window in a historic building in Osnabrück.

Mounted on the street level outside the building are the following instructions for viewers:

INSTRUCTIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FIELD EXPERIMENT OSNABRÜCK:

1. Stare directly into the static on the screen.
2. In your head, count slowly the numbers backwards from 10 to 1 (at the rate of approximately one number per second)
3. When you get to the number "1," close your eyes.
4. Imagine a field.

The amount of time the participant stays in this position, with eyes closed in front of the television, is up to the participant.

OSNABRÜCK & THE BIG BANG

Some scholars believe that Osnabrück is the location of Germany's oldest gymnasium, or school, being the purported site of a gymnasium built in 804 by Charlemagne. This fact makes Osnabrück a perfect location to study the cosmic signals that were first formed at the birth of the universe.

According to Wikipedia, "the charter [of the school] with the date is disputed by historians, some of whom believe it could be a forgery." The fact that its status is up for debate only adds to the overarching dialogue presented by Field Experiment Osnabrück, as the age of the universe itself is disputed. The majority view is 13.7 billion years, but some scientists are questioning that number.

According to a recent article in The Economist, "Roger Penrose, of Oxford University, believes that the Big Bang in which the visible universe began was not actually the beginning of everything. It was merely the latest example of a series of such bangs that renew reality when it is getting tired out."

For more information, email MomenTech: m01123581321345589144@gmail.com


Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Field Experiment


The Field Experiment tests the power of human mind, as participants are challenged to connect to the cosmos by "imagining a field"

NEW YORK, November 10, 2010 (updated January 2, 2011) -- The Behring Institute for Medical Research in Dresden, Germany, has selected MomenTech’s Field Experiment, a psychological meditation-based audience participation project that utilizes cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), for inclusion in the 2011 publication “Placebos for Art.”

The Field Experiment is an interactive, site-specific audiovisual project that explores meditation, self-hypnosis, the media and our cosmic origins by asking participants to imagine a field after having stared into live television static for a period of 10 seconds.

Anyone can participate in The Field Experiment.

To create an installation to conduct The Field Experiment, organizers will need:

- one (1) functional analog television, set to static
- one (1) white Greek column, preferably Doric, with a height no greater than 5'
- one (1) set of instructions to participate in The Field Experiment (as noted below)

Set the TV on top of the column. Plug in the TV, turn it on and set it to a channel that receives only static. Turn the volume knob to its highest possible setting. Mount a piece of paper with the following instructions, or place the instructions directly on a nearby wall. The following instructions should be readable by viewers standing directly in front of the TV.

(instructions start)

INSTRUCTIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FIELD EXPERIMENT

1. Stare directly into the static on the television.
2. In your head, count slowly the numbers backwards from 10 to 1 (at the rate of approximately one number per second)
3. When you get to the number "1," close your eyes.
4. Imagine a field.

(instructions end)

The amount of time the participant stays in this position, with eyes closed in front of the television, is up to the participant.

COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION (CMBR)

"A small percentage of the static that you see on an analog television, when it's tuned to an empty channel, is from the Big Bang," notes artist Rick Doble, who uses analog television static in his work, in an NPR interview with Guy Raz.

"It's really the echo of the Big Bang. It's called cosmic microwave background radiation or CMBR. And this is being picked up by the television signal."


The Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations from the 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data seen over the full sky. The colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations, as in a weather map.
(image: NASA/WMAP Science Team).



Raz: So, this echo from billion of years ago...
Doble: Right...
Raz: ...is still echoing...
Doble: ...like 13 billion years ago.
Raz: ...is communicating to us through terrestrial television.

MEDIATION & MEDITATION

In a world where digital television is the norm, the ability to access live static is getting more and more difficult. It can also be argued that in a world increasingly inundated with information, it is increasingly harder to find moments of quiet reflection.

Information/media overload, meditation, hypnosis, and the cosmos are all themes explored in Field Experiment, which recalls Nam June Paik's 1974 sculpture/installation "TV-Buddha," in which an antique statue of Buddha "watches" itself on a closed-circuit television.

But the Buddha is also being "watched" by the video camera. As Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google, said, "Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better. Where that leads is uncertain."


Nam June Paik. TV Buddha, 1974
closed circuit video installation (video camera, monitor) with bronze sculpture


In Field Experiment, Paik's mediated gaze shifts from the other (Buddha/no ego) to the self (ego) and back again (Nirvana), as viewers are invited to participate in the experiment, simply by standing in front a television displaying pieces of information, some of which have taken 13.7 billion years to travel from the beginning of time (i.e., the Big Bang) to Earth at the present time.

Viewers, then, become vessels that channel the Universe's earliest signals of activity through their mental ability to, quite prosaically, "imagine a field" through the use of self-hypnosis.

It is relatively easy to meditate in a quiet environment. But one's true ability to meditate is demonstrated by meditating in the most chaotic of environments -- to "imagine a field" through the static.

Wikipedia defines meditation as "any of a family of techniques that involve the self-induction of a mode of consciousness in order to realize some benefit."
For the deepest meditation, one has to not only focus on one object, but to make the awareness itself be that object. This way the focus of consciousness is turned back to the self. In this sense, The Field Experiment might simply be used as a meditation technique.

However, a successful installation of The Field Experiment also offers a way to (re)connect with the origins of the cosmos in the form of the cosmic microwave background radiation that is readily accessible through an analog television that is tuning in a "non-channel."

--

NOTES

Producers of The Field Experiment are encouraged to gather the following data, but it is not required for a successful installation:

1. the age/gender of each participant
2. the length of time each participant stays in front of the television with their eyes closed
3. the size of the television
4. the decibels (db) of the audio of the level (i.e., the volume level of the static)
5. any post-experiment participant comments

This data can be displayed to the public in conjunction with the installation of The Field Experiment, and can also be sent directly to MomenTech for analysis.

For more information, email MomenTech:
m01123581321345589144@gmail.com