Maker Music Festival: Fusiform Polyphony

Fusiform Polyphony

Fusiform Polyphony (Face Music) is a series of six robotic sculptures commissioned by Nuit Blanch Toronto. They are designed to compose music with input from participants’ facial images.

Micro video cameras mounted on these robots move toward people’s faces while capturing human snapshots. These images are digitally processed, pixelated, and turned into a constantly evolving generative soundscape, where facial features are turned into generative sound melody and rhythm.

These robots take the multicultural makeup of any city and have each person’s unique look, creating a different soundscape. Each “face song,” joining with other facial soundscapes, makes an overall sonic human/robot experience.

These elements fused manifest the viewer as participant/actor/contributor and conductor in defining new ways of interacting with robots and creating a unique sonic and live-action robotics/video environment.

Fusiform Polyphony (Face Music) is a series of six robotic sculptures commissioned by Nuit Blanch Toronto and curated by Shirley Madill. Fusiform Polyphony composes music with input from participants' facial images.
Micro video cameras on the tips of these soft robots, covered in human hair, move toward people's faces while capturing human snapshots. These images are digitally processed, pixelated, and turned into a constantly evolving generative soundscape, where facial features turn these images into abundant sound melodies and rhythm.

These robots take the multicultural makeup of any city and have each person's unique look, creating a different soundscape. Each "face song," combined with other facial soundscapes, makes an overall sonic human/robot experience.

These elements fused manifest the viewer as participant/actor/contributor and conductor in defining new ways of interacting with soft robots and creating a unique sonic and live-action robotics/video environment.

Another critical component of this work is projections of these many facial and digitized images above Yonge Dundas Square onto the LED screens that float above the city. These works will explore new morphologies of soft robotics, an emerging field where soft skins and gentle software code allow these robots to have an artificial sense of their environment and be more approachable than industrial robots.

The question this art/science research posits; in the context of contemporary interactive and immersive electronic arts is; how can a robot structure, inform, enhance and magnify people's behavior and interactions?

How can generative algorithms be scripted to compose and playback a unique and constantly evolving generative soundscape while maintaining and enhancing the viewer's experience?

Frequently Asked Questions

What inspired you to do this?

A realization that human faces distinctive and could launch unlimited unique musical and sonic compositions when combined with artificial intelligence and soft robotics

How long did it take to make it?

Six months of production, and a lifetime of observation, learning, experimentation and play.

How long have you been doing things like this?

45 years

How much did this cost to do?

90K in materials with the artist making 5K after budget was complete

Have you done other things like this?

Yes, I work with interactive robotics, artificial intelligence and bioart works, inspired by living systems and a philosophy of finding symbiosis, with our intelligent machines

What did you wish you knew before you started this?

That it needed to survive driving rain, and 45 mile per hour winds in Toronto, as it was displayed outdoors in Yonge Dundas Square before 100K people in the square

Are there plans available to make this? Do you sell this?

It is complete, and can be purchased or displayed at appropriate venues given budget availability.

What’s next?

Working with a new morphology bio Robotic Swarm robot series, AI generative software and a series of SIGNS we need to see, to survive our globally troubled planet, given human induced carbon output.

Resoures?

I hired two former Graduate Students of mine, from The Ohio State Art and Technology Program, where I was teaching; Nathaniel Hartman and Nick Bontrager. I published many of my designs and techniques in my free online book here: http://newmediaartist.org/

KenRinaldo : Artist, Maker, Composer, Experimenter

Ken Rinaldo, is internationally recognized for interactive bio and robotic art installations. His work develops hybrid ecologies with humans, machines, plants, and animals, by constructing idealized social, biological, and machine symbionts. Rinaldo’s colorful 3D animations, prints, and hand-drawn works have been commissioned by museums and galleries, with many in museum and private collections. His work appears in 100s of books and art reviews such as while traveling to over 35 countries.

Rinaldo received an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica, First prize at Vida 3.0, A United Nations Green Leaf Award, commissions from Nuit Blanche Toronto, Vancouver Olympics, Te Papa Museum NZ, and Kiasma Museum Finland.