The exhibition takes place as part of the 2-month RIXC Baltic-Nordic Art, Science & Techno-Ecologies residency, during which the artist also created a new sensor-based digital instrument for live performances and concerts. The instrument will be presented at the SENSOR_SOUND_MACHINE concert by Marko Timlin at the RIXC Gallery, Thursday, December 14, 2023 at 20:00. Playing this instrument is like sculpting sounds in time: the artist is controlling and shaping the sounds with his hands and body as well as with light.
BITS AND BYTES exhibition on view until February 3, 2024 is a kinetic sound installation consisting of 104 recycled floppy disk drives. By combining obsolete technology of the 1980s and 1990s with the technological means and aesthetics of the 21st century, completely new sonorous universes arise.
BITS AND BYTES combines the everyday, the mechanical, but also the broken, discarded, the machine scrap with highly complex computer controls and introduces us to an unknown sound world. It resembles a living organism that sings with 104 different machine voices inviting visitors to immerse themselves in complex spatial sound phenomena that move around them.
BITS AND BYTES aims to reveal the hidden poetry of the machine world by singing songs beyond humankind.
The SENSOR_SOUND_MACHINE concert taking place on Thursday, December 14, 2023 at 20:00 will feature a new sensor-based instrument which is an invention connecting the physical world with the digital world. Ultrasonic sensors, solar panels, infrared sensors and an arduino microcontroller receive information from the physical world and transmit this data to a computer where it is used to generate and control digital audio feedbacks.
The instrument’s sounds are based entirely on digital audio feedback making use of their chaotic nature. It does not imitate the sound of existing acoustic or electronic instruments, but rather presents the listeners a purely digital sound aesthetic imitating the chaotic behavior of natural phenomena! Playing the instrument generates complexity: richly organized sonic patterns, sometimes stable and sometimes unstable, sometimes predictable and sometimes unpredictable.
Through the delicate interplay between human performer and sensor-based instrument highly complex and vivid digital sound worlds emerge. Playing this instrument is like sculpting sounds in time: the artist is controlling and shaping the sounds with his hands and body as well as with light.
Imagine the vision of a man-machine: the harmonic interplay between the world of the organic and the world of the machine, giving rise through this synthesis to something new that has been made with the technology of our time, of our generation, which would not have been feasible previously without this technology.
Marko Timlin is a artist from Helsinki, creating the artworks that link science with art, technology with nature and the past with the present. His artistic work centers on the development of kinetic sound installations and performances with self-made sound machines.
His approach is part of a broader perspective of a peaceful coexistence between the human and the machine. With his artistic inventions he proves that both can work together to create experiences that transcend them.
In the recently published anthology covering Finnish media art´s last century (“Suomalaisen mediataiteen ensimmäinen vuosisata”) Timlin is named as a successor of inventive genius Erkki Kurenniemi.
Timlin’s works have been exhibited and performed world-wide including at Whitebox New York (USA), Sight & Sound Festival Montréal (CA), Fylkingen Stockholm (SE), Kiasma Helsinki (FI), EOF gallery Paris (FR), E:vent gallery London (UK), Piksel Festival (NO) and Neues Museum Nürnberg (DE).
www.timlin.de
The BITS AND BYTES exhibition is on view at the RIXC Gallery, Lencu iela 2 until February 3, 2024, from Wednesday to Saturday, 12:00-18:00. The concert at the RIXC Gallery, on December 14 at 20:00.
