Before answering my questions about Fruits, Vegetables; Fruit and Vegetable Salad his new exhibition opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art New York-based artist Darren Bader says that he has a specific (read: irreverent) style and he hopes its not too much of an annoyance. I tell him its not an annoyance at all and start with an easy one: Where do you get your ideas? Oh, you know, the magical world of ideas, he replies.

His exhibition, which takes place on the eighth floor of the Whitney, comprises a previously untitled work that the museum acquired in 2015 but has never displayed until now. When viewers emerge from the lift on the eighth floor, they will discover a cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables, each variety presented as a sculpture on its own wooden plinth. Four times a week, museum staff will collect the ripened fruit and vegetables and according to Baders instructions make a salad. The slicing and dicing will be captured on film and projected in the empty gallery, after which the salad will be served to viewers. Staff will then replenish the plinths with fresh produce, and so the process will continue.

Nature has long had a role in Baders playful, provocative work. In 2011 he let loose two goats in a gallery. He intended to feature a couple of cats, too, but realised that wouldnt do because as he wrote in an accompanying announcement cat predator, goat prey. Instead, he encouraged viewers to adopt a cat from an animal shelter in the East Village and, in that way, own a Bader artwork of their own. The following year, he created Lasagna on Heroin, which is exactly what it says on the tin: a serving of lasagne injected with heroin.

His works are a puckish update of Marcel Duchamps readymades, which present objects from daily life (a urinal, a shovel) as high art. Although, as Bader points out, Were 107 years post-premiere of the storied readymade, so notions of high art and daily life are not what they were. The installation at the Whitney also nods to other works across art history that have engaged with food. I mention Make a Salad by Alison Knowles, a founding member of the Fluxus group, which also included Yoko Ono. This 1962 performance piece, in the past few years revived at Tate Modern in London and on the High Line in New York, involved Knowles chopping vegetables in time to live music, then serving the mix to the audience.

Theres also that hovering green apple revisited again and again by Rene Magritte; Giuseppe Arcimboldos whimsical Vertumnus, which depicts Roman emperor Rudolf II as a Roman god made out of fruit and veg; and even Maurizio Cattelans banana, which was duct-taped to a wall and sold for $120,000, before being eaten by another artist at Art Basel in Miami last month. Bader comes back at me with his own equally appetising affinities: early Gabriel Orozco, a Mexican artist who makes use of myriad found objects; Urs Fischers Untitled, which features the screwed-together halves of an apple and a pear suspended from a ceiling; and Hollis Framptons voluptuous Lemon, a video work in which the titular object is lasciviously perused in light and shadow. In the past, Bader has described food as natures impeccable sculpture. I ask him to expand on that and he replies, Human optics being human optics

To Christie Mitchell, the curator behind this exhibition, Baders work is about appreciating natural produce. Its a luscious thing, she says, but theres also a hint of decomposition. The salad-making is presumably, in part, a practical way around the works natural shelf life. Yes and no, says Bader. With no, Id guess I thought the mere display of fruits and vegetables wasnt rigorous enough of an art proposition; the salad element added extra texture.

And extra pairs of hands. The fact that the work involves not only Bader but also museum staff and viewers makes it highly collaborative. Its a labour of love. Well, yes, shopping for produce several times a week and then keeping an eye on it is not something thats in our normal schedule, says Mitchell. She adds, however, that the Whitney receives a number of requests from artists that are out of the ordinary. Also, its been great to see the excitement of the staff in the Studio Caf, for instance, who are always surrounded by art but not necessarily part of it.

Baders edible artwork calls into question not only what art is, but also the way in which museums collect and display it. It stimulates thoughts about the relationship between art and consumer, as well as the consumption of food and entertainment. Plus, its funny. When I ask him whether sticking fruit and veg on plinths in a museum makes it art, he tells me he wouldnt know. Either way, lets hope it tastes as good as it looks. Speaking of which, what does it mean to eat a work of art? Beyond my ken, says Bader.

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How do you follow heroin lasagne? The artist who wants you to dice his veg - The Guardian

This week, an experimental motion-activated sound exhibit opened to the public again.

In 2016, the museum commissioned a German-born artist who has received a MacArthur Genius award, an honorary doctorate in musical arts from the California Institute of the Arts and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship to create a custom piece for the building, still being designed at the time, curator Ryan Hardesty said.

The artist, who goes by only his last name, Trimpin, worked alongside the museums architect.

When you have a visual image, a visual image is silent. Trimpin said. It hangs on the wall. It only has to be dusted.

He wanted to create something innovative that wouldnt be blaring or intrusive for people in the museum. Instead, he wanted it to be healing.

He designed an exhibit with 12 strategically placed, motion-responsive horns suspended from the ceiling, which project sounds at exactly 432 hertz, a frequency associated with mysterious healing properties. Ambiente432 was born.

Its expansive in terms of the idea of what art can be, Hardesty said.

Trimpin usually combines ancient principles with cutting edge technology, Debby Stinson, the museums public relations manager, said. One of Trimpins inspirations to use the note came from Tibetan singing bowls which were traditionally tuned to the 432 hertz pitch.

His piece works based on an understanding of sound waves. Pitches, which are understood as different musical notes, are made up of wavelength frequencies, according to an article on frequency and pitch from Columbia University. In other words, each note has a corresponding frequency.

Western music recognizes groups of eight notes called octaves, which include the notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G. There are 10 octaves, octave zero being the lowest pitch set of notes and octave nine being the highest pitch.

A standard low pitch or low frequency A note is A0 at 27.50 hertz while the note A four octaves higher in pitch is A4 at 440 hertz.

But musical notes have only been tuned according to these standards since the 1930s, Trimpin said.

Different cultures would tune their instruments in a range which was comfortable to the body. Trimpin said.

The non-standard musical note A4 at 432 hertz, naturally relaxes people, he said. In Western music, musicians began tuning A4 to 440 hertz in the 1900s to create an international system that was simple to divide, Trimpin said, but theres evidence that the ever-so-slightly lower 432 hertz pitch has a healing effect.

Trimpin said ancient societies used this tuning because of its mysterious effects.

The body would respond in a very sympathetic way, Trimpin said.

Brain oscillations, which are the rhythmic pulses of electrical activity in the brain, naturally have a frequency of 8 hertz, as does the earth itself, Trimpin said.

Eight hertz, at about five octaves lower than 432 hertz A, is the lowest A frequency that exists, making it the notes fundamental frequency. Eight hertz is lower than humans can perceive as pitch.

Color, like pitch, is a human perception of wavelengths. The horns are colored a deep orange that Stinson said corresponds to the sound frequency of 432 hertz. Light waves have a much higher frequency than sound waves, so they are measured in terahertz, each terahertz being equal to one trillion hertz.

The horns themselves also serve a purpose. Trimpin said organic sounds from horns have different effects than sounds from speakers, as he learned with a contraption he made that featured pitched duck calls pushed through organ pipes.

When he started the contraption near a pond, ducks came flocking. When he played a recording of the contraption on speakers, it had no effect on the animals. He summed their response up to their different range of hearing than humans, explaining that the recorded sound didnt offer the full range of pitches.

Trimpins works play in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and have traveled through museums internationally, but he said the difference in making a contraption for college students is that theyre open to strangeness. He said hes seen people lie down to take it in.

The museum serves people of every major, Stinson said, and in Japan, architects and engineers alike take art classes as a prerequisite.

When you stand in front of a great piece of art, you never forget it, Stinson said. And it usually inspires you to do the best you can in whatever discipline youre in.

The work is a permanent feature in the museums collection, but will only be open to the public intermittently, Hardesty said.

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The University of New South Wales website features a tool, theFrequency to Musical Note Calculator, to explore musical notes and frequencies.

Read the original post:
Sound installation Ambiente432 returns to WSU art museum - The Daily Evergreen

By Pearl Yan January 17, 2020

From whimsical lantern displays to installations paying tribute to traditional Chinese craftsmanship, these Chinese New Year decorations are bound to add festive flair to your Instagram feed

Pacific Places Garden Court is turned into a lantern festival this year, featuring 12 lanterns hanging from the ceiling and a towering lantern installation inspired by traditional Chinese lanterns and hot air balloonsa masterpiece crafted by local home decor brand, Lala Curio.

Stepping inside, youll find yourself surrounded by 88 (a lucky number that represents prosperity in Chinese culture) colourful lanterns, which resembles a Middle Eastern bazaar with an oriental twist, making it the perfect backdrop for an auspicious selfie.

See also: 5Chinese New Year2020 Staycation Packages In Hong Kong

Celebrating the lively character of Cuju, an ancient Chinese football game, the ifc mall is transformed into The Courtyard of Harmony, featuring lanterns, flying birds and fresh florals in the spirit of unity and festive blessings.

A figurative version of the traditional fortune walk, guests can stroll along the mini bridge and behold the surrounding blossoming red and pink kalanchoe and begonia roses to welcome good luck and health in the new year.

Don't leave without stopping by the Snap-then-Chat photo zone, where you can have fun taking selfies and add festive icons and messages to create your own WhatsApp stickers to send well wishes to your loved ones this Chinese New Year.

See also: Chinese New Year2020: A Hong Kong Itinerary

Originally posted here:
Chinese New Year 2020 Decorations To Catch In Hong Kong Shopping Malls - Hong Kong Tatler

San Francisco's Carpenters Workshop Gallery is staging an exhibition of works by Studio Drift that aim to showcase the "intersection of nature and technology".

DRIFT: About Nature, Technology and Humankind features site-specific installations and video presentations of projects by the Dutch artistic collective.

Suspended from the ceiling in Carpenters Workshop Gallery is the interactive piece Flylight, an installation made up of 300 cylindrical glass tubes, each intended to represent a flying bird.

The piece incorporates software that responds to stimuli in its immediate environment to simulate the behaviour of a flock of starlings flying through the sky as a collective unit.

It comprises glass tubes filled with a sensor and lights that sense visitors as they approach and triggers the light will follow them around them similar to movement pattern used by swarms of starling birds.

"It consists of delicate glass tubes that light up in an unpredictable way, partially responsive to external stimuli," Studio Drift said. "The patterns, in which the installation lights up, is not pre-programmed but has an interactive compound: just like a real flock of birds."

Also on display is the Dutch studio's Fragile Future III a thin copper frame structure decorated with 1,200 dried dandelions seeds handpicked from fields. Each dandelion is placed over an LED light to act like a diffuser.

"It is based on the fact that the dandelion is seen as a weed and it spreads very easily," the studio added.

Franchise Freedom, a video of a performative sculpture premiered at the 2017 Art Basel in Miami, is also on exhibit. It shows video footage of flying drones that mimic the flight patterns of birds.

"This performative sculpture translates the majestic flight patterns of birds, both as singular animals and as a flock, into sweeping movements of a fleet of autonomous drones, inviting viewers to experience the natural phenomena of birds in motion through a 21st-century lens," Carpenter's Workshop Gallery said.

DRIFT: About Nature, Technology and Humankind is on view from 17 January to 30 April 2020 at the Carpenter's Workshop Gallery in San Francisco. The exhibition also features works by Maarten Baas, Aldo Bakker, Sebastian Brajkovic, Johanna Grawunder, Joris Laarman, Mathieu Lehanneur, Robert Stadler and the Verhoeven Twins.

"DRIFT: About Nature, Technology and Humankind seeks to identify and learn from the underlying mechanisms of the natural world in an effort to reconnect humanity to the environment it inhabits," Carpenters Workshop Gallery said.

"In an era when environmental concerns are top of mind, this exhibition brings together artists who, in the words of historian William Meyers, 'make an effort to understand and materialise the nature of nature.' "

Studio Drift was founded by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta in 2007 and is located in Amsterdam.

It has completed a number of works that explore the link between nature and technology including an installation of 3,000 blue blocks that represent the plastic used to make a single grocery bag and an artificial tree that responds to the movements, heartbeats and brain activity of visitors.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery was founded in London in 2006 by Le Gaillard and Julien Lombrail in a former carpenter's workshop.

The San Francisco space, which opened inside a former church in 2018, forms its fourth outpost, following other locations in New York and Paris.

Recent exhibits at the international gallery have included a presentation of furniture by French-Swedish artist Ingrid Donat in San Francisco and a modular sofa that references Brutalist architecture by fashion designer Rick Owens displayed in Paris.

Photography is courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

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Studio Drift exhibits interactive works based on birds and dandelions in San Francisco - Dezeen

Dont necessarily take a locations pricing at face value. Sometimes the venue rental fee may get you in the door, but there are additional fees on top of that that you need to be aware of...to make an educated decision, Walter says. These can include anything from administrative fees to taxes to gratuity.

If your venue offers food and drink, also request a sample menu as part of the proposaldont assume that wine service is included with dinner. If you want that raw bar youve seen in marketing photos, check to see whether its part of the standard catering fee.

If the venue is outdoors, what is the Plan B for rain? And the Plan C for a major storm?

You want to have an option for every conceivable situation that [you] might be in, says Walter. And hurricanes are definitely a thing.

One time, Walter was planning a Cape Cod wedding that involved an outdoor cocktail hour and tented reception. Plan B was to move the cocktail party under the tent. Plan C was a no-tent, indoors-only option. She started creating a floor plan for the last-ditch option the week before the event when she found out that a hurricane was potentially en route. The hurricane did not come up the coast, she says, but it was a great reminder of how important it is to have a backup plan if youre getting married in New England, but then a backup for your backup plan if youre getting married on a coast when its hurricane season.

Couples should also form a contingency plan for inclement weather at other times of the year, including snowstorms.

Are there cut-off times we should be aware of?

In Massachusetts, many venues limit how many consecutive hours they can serve alcohol at the bar, Walter says. Or the venues neighborhood may have a noise ordinance. On Cape Cod, for example, most venues with combined indoor/outdoor spaces shut down by 10 p.m.

How much time will we have to set up beforehand?

A lot of times, a venue will have a certain number of hours included in the rental fee prior to guest arrival [when] the vendors can get into the space and set up, Walter says. If its not enough, you may be able to pay a fee for some extra time, but learn your options before you sign.

Does the venue have a preferred vendor list, or an exclusive vendor list?

Many historical venues only work with specific companies because those vendors on those lists work well in the space and preserve and protect the space, Walter says. So ask about this before you fall in love with a cake baker you cant useor you realize all three exclusive caterers are out of your budget.

Walter also likes to ask if theres any leeway, though thats typically not the case for exclusive lists. With preferred vendor lists, theres usually wiggle room to be able to speak with the venue and say, Hey, Im interested in bringing in this vendor instead of one of your preferred. Is this OK? Are there any things that I need to know about before I do so? she says.

Will ours be the only wedding on the property that day?

If the idea of another event encroaching on your space is a concern, let the venue know upfront. And if [you] arent the only wedding on property, how do they manage that? asks Rene Sabo, founder of the Boston-based event planning company Urban Soire. Will your guests seeor hearthe other weddings guests? Is there enough parking for everyone?

Are there decor restrictions?

Rules and restrictions are prevalent, especially in historical venues. Find out if you can display real candles, or if youll be able to hang your dream floral installation from the ceiling. There are of course workaroundsLED candles and freestanding flower arrangements, for examplebut know beforehand so you dont end up disappointed months down the line that you cant have your Pinterest-perfect aisle.

Wheres the guest parking?

Do your due diligence to determine where guests can park, and if all of their cars will be able to fit. And if theres not enough parking, Walter gets creative with her clients. I like to see what our shuttle situation will be: Can a large vehicle, like a 55-passenger motor coach, get into the venue parking lot, drop people off, turn around, and leave?

Can you show me the handicap-accessible entrances and bathrooms?

If older or disabled people are attending, youll want to make sure they can get around the venue without trouble. If there are stairs at a venue, I always ask, Walter says.

What is the cancellation policy?

We know: Thinking about calling the whole thing off is a bummer. Its a horrible thing to talk about, but no one ever

looks at the cancellation policy, says Sabo. But its best to prepare for the unexpected. For winter weddings, for instance, you never know when a bad blizzard might hit and youd have to cancel.

_______________

Alison Goldman is a writer and editor based in Chicago. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Link:
10 questions to ask a wedding venue before you commit - The Boston Globe

(TNS) U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell is asking a Congress that has refused to extend tax credits for electric vehicles to approve a bill that would spend $2 billion annually to encourage development and adoption of plug-in cars.

Advocates of electric cars have pleaded with Congress to do more to support adoption of EVs, but with gas prices low and consumers opting for SUVs and pickups in large numbers, lawmakers have largely sat on their hands.

Last year, Congress failed to include approve legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, that would have tripled the 200,000 cap on the number of EVs per manufacturer that qualify for $7,500 tax credits.

Dingells bill is an another attempt to jumpstart the conversation in Washington, D.C., about EVs, but President Donald Trump is a noted skeptic-in-chief of the technology and has floated the possibility of eliminating all tax credits for electric cars.

The Democrat from Dearborn, Mich., said she hopes Trump will not be a roadblock for her new legislation.

"The president wants the companies to do well," she said. "The companies' product plans all have electric vehicles in them. He should be encouraging incentives that support how the companies will be competitive globally."

Dingell's legislation, known as the USA Electrify Forward Act, directs U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to "accelerate domestic manufacturing efforts directed toward the improvement of batteries, power electronics and other technologies for use in plug-in electric vehicles."

It also directs the transportation department to update residential and commercial building codes to encourage installation of electric-vehicle charging stations and orders states to consider measures to encourage charging stations.

The bill would appropriate $2 billion each year for the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program from 2021 to 2035.

It's the first major electric-vehicle legislation since Stabenow's unsuccessful bill, which would have allowed automakers to offer a slightly lower tax credit of $7,000 for another 400,000 plug-in cars on top of the pre-existing cap.

In 2018, General Motors Co. and Tesla hit the lifetime ceiling of 200,000 electric vehicles, triggering a phase-out process cut the tax credit in half every six months until they hit zero at the beginning of this year.

Tesla, GM and Nissan accounted for 62% of the 1.18 million electric vehicles that were on the road as of last March, according to the Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. investor-owned electric companies. Carmakers sold 236,067 electric cars from January to September 2019; that was significantly down from 361,307 sold in the same period of 2018, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, which lobbies for policies that promote electric-drive technologies.

Dingell said other manufacturers will have to catch up to GM and Tesla on electric-car production, especially if they hope to compete internationally.

"All the companies need to move to electric vehicles," she said. "They know it and they want to do it. It's a very significant part of all their product plans."

The Dearborn Democrat acknowledged "there continues to be consumer acceptance problems," which she hopes her legislation will help to address.

"We definitely need to develop infrastructure around the country," Dingell said. "People are going to have think differently, we're going to need charging stations that do it different. People are used to pulling into a gas station and filling up in five to ten minutes."

Genevieve Cullen, president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, is optimistic that Dingell's bill will fare better than previous attempts to increase subsidies for electric cars.

"What we know for sure is that electric transportation has broad, bipartisan support in Congress," she said, citing efforts by the Democratically controlled U.S. House to address climate change. "Congress has already demonstrated they are interested in action in this area."

Cullen said she attributed the failure of Stabenow's legislation to the fact that supporters were trying to include it in a broader spending bill that Congress was attempting to pass quickly before the end of the year.

"We've made a lot of strides, we just need to keep accelerating," she said. "Most folks (on Capitol Hill) understand that public investment is the key to us taking the lead on electric mobility."

Mike Palicz, federal affairs manager for Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington-based conservative group founded by Grover Norquist that opposes all tax increases, strongly disagreed.

"We just saw Congress reject further subsidization of electric vehicles," he said. "Fresh off the heels of that, from a taxpayer perspective, here's another bill that's trying to subsidize electric vehicles."

Palicz said most measures that aimed at subsidizing electric vehicles beyond the existing tax credits would require taking money designated for roads and transit from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Highway Trust Fund, which is funded by an 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gas tax.

Noting that drivers of fully electric cars do not pay into the Highway Trust Fund, Palicz said "What they're doing is taking gas tax dollars that are supposed to go to roads and bridges and using it to pay for electric vehicles and EV infrastructure.

"We're talking about subsidizing what are essentially luxury vehicles," he said.

Electric vehicles have been eligible for federal tax credits under a program first established by the George W. Bush administration. The program was later expanded by the Obama administration in a bid to encourage EV development by sweetening the deal on vehicles that are typically more expensive.

Michelle Krebs, senior director of automotive relations for Cox Automotive and executive analyst for Autotrader, said there have been "mixed results" on incentives for electric vehicles thus far

"Certainly, when we look at places like Atlanta some years ago and Norway, where incentives of all sorts are hefty, EV sales certainly go up," she said. "In our EV study from last summer, people considering EVs werent particularly familiar with incentives. I suspect Tesla buyers and maybe some of the other buyers of luxury EVs would buy regardless of the incentives well see if that continues when Tesla incentives are totally gone."

Krebs added: "On the other hand, EVs are perceived, and in some cases, truly are, more expensive than comparable gas-powered vehicles, so as EVs move toward more mainstream audiences, affordability is an obstacle one that might be helped by incentives."

2020 The Detroit News.Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.

Continue reading here:
New Bill Hopes to Electrify the EV Debate in D.C. - Governing

LAS VEGAS - Another CES, another promise of truly wireless power coming into our lives in the very near future. Year after year we've seen demo after demo but no real shipping products.

But Guru, a startup based in Pasadena, California, says that its solution is different, and better than anything else thats out there. Wait, haven't we heard that before, too?

"The basic science is proven, but there are structural market problems to overcome and companies have run into implementation issues, said Avi Greengart, lead analyst at Techsponential.

At CES 2020, I got a demo of Gurus over-the-air wireless charging tech and spoke to company CEO Florian Bohn to learn how it all works. I also checked out a couple of Guru's direct competitors Ossia and Wi-Charge to see how the true wireless charging war is shaping up.

Guru is a "zero-contact" energy system that uses radio waves to carry energy through the air, from a Guru generator to a device with a recovery unit (basically the receiver). This unit has a thin array of circuits that announces it presence to the generator, and also determines how much energy the gadget needs.

The generator converts electricity into high-frequency millimeter wave radio energy, similar to whats being used to deploy 5G networks. The use of mmWaves is a critical component of Guru, because this allows the radio waves beams to be highly focused. This is what Guru calls Smart RF Lensing.

"Smart RF Lensing allows us to achieve long range, efficient power deliver with small product form factors," said Bohn.

The recovery unit could be placed on the back of a device, or embedded directly into it. This unit could also potentially be used in things like phone cases or smart home devices, such as robot vacuums or security cameras.

At CES, Guru was showing off a couple of examples of how its wireless charging might work. One was Rovee, a robot vacuum with a Guru generator inside. The idea was that that it could charge other IoT gadgets around your home as it roamed around.

Another example was a lamp-sized desktop devicethat could be deployed in a conference room, which would charge multiple smartphones at the same time.

I got an up-close look at the third prototype from Guru: a ceiling-mounted generator that can send power to a receiver pad attached to a phone. I could see that the generator was delivering power, because a Guru rep also waved a tiny light bulb with a receiver attached to it around the base of the device. The light bulb lit up when the rep brought it near the generator.

Because the mmWave beams are directed and focused, Guru says that the signals go only where you want them to, and nowhere else. Wi-Fi, by contrast, spits out energy in all directions. Guru also claims that its energy beams have shallow penetration depth and cannot reach internal organs.

But Guru also doesnt take any chances. As an additional safety measure, theres sensing technology that pauses the energy beams within milliseconds if a pet or person gets in the beams path. I saw this in person during my demo.

"We are taking consumer safety concerns seriously," said Bohn. "We are employing redundant mechanisms and techniques to abide by and surpass all the applicable regulations."

Bohn couldnt give any specifics about when Guru-enabled products will be shipping to consumers, but it's not soon. Thats because the company is initially targeting commercial applications, such as retail environments and warehouses.

"I expect GuRu enabled products will be launched on a larger scale within the next 24 months (or sooner)," said Bohn. "Industrial applications and lower power, shorter range consumer products are somewhat more likely to be the first on the market, but we are working on developing products for a plethora of applications."

Bohn shared that consumer products in the mobile business with OEM integration are likely further down the road. But other consumer applications should be available sooner for Guru, such as computer peripheral charging, game controller charging, and smart home applications such as powering cameras and surround sound speakers.

Guru is still awaiting FCC approval, which should allow the company to bring its first product to market later this year.

There are a lot of competitors in the wireless charging-over-distance space, including Ossia. That company just debuted its Cota Home, which delivers power over the 5.8-GHz band to devices in a 30-foot range.

The transmitter isnt too large: 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters. However, its important to note that Ossia has not yet received FCC clearance for its 5.8-GHz technology; only for its gadgets in the 2.4-GHz band.

Ossia is also working with phone case maker Spigen to debut the Cota Forever Sleeve, an accessory that could receive wireless power over the air. Ossia didnt give a specific timetable, but the sleeve could launch before the end of the year.

In the meantime, Ossia has a partnership with Walmart to use display Cota wireless power products in stores. This will give the retailer the opportunity to change prices in real time on any number of products.

Ossia has also struck a deal with Galanz, which will be integrating Cota transmitters into refrigerators, air conditioning units and other appliances.

"Most consumer technologies were developed in enterprise niche markets, or were too expensive to bring to the consumer," said Hatem Zeine, Ossia CTO. "We see a straight development path between our work in the enterprise and the consumer."

I also met with another company called Wi-Charge, which uses infrared light instead of radio waves to deliver wireless power over distance. The benefits of using light instead of radio waves include delivering up to several watts, compared to just milliwatts, of power; pinpoint accuracy; and potentially less safety risk to users.

"Wi-Charge worked long and hard to obtain consumer safety certification from UL, the US Government and relevant international safety organizations," said Yuval Boger, chief marketing officer for Wi-Charge. "With Wi-Charge, power does not decrease with increased distance. We can deliver much more power over much greater distances."

You do need a clear line of sight from a transmitter to a receiver: a photovoltaic cell that converts the light into power. But Boger points out that when an RF wave hits a wall, part of it is absorbed (reducing energy) and part of it scatters. Line of sight provides precise control over where the energy goes.

The company announced six new partners at CES 2020, including Alfred smart locks, Gojo (the maker of Purell hand sanitizers), Sloan (a maker of electronic faucets) and more.

During one demo, I saw a sink made by German company Hansgrohe that automatically turned on with a motion sensor, and also had an embedded display that counted down, encouraging users to wash their hands long enough to get completely clean.

Wi-Charge says that the first products with its technology (both in residential and industrial environments) will hit the market this year. The company has pilot installations in public spaces.

This is not an easy question to answer, partially because different technologies use different methods for delivering wireless power over distance. But for the companies involved, safety is top of mind and all of them are seeking the necessary approvals if they don't already have it.

"Consumers may be initially cautious around new technologies, but since any Cota applications will be FCC certified and positively impact their lives, we believe consumer adoption will occur just as it did with cell phones," said Ossia's Zeine." Our technology complies with the exact same safety exposure standards as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Wi-Charge, on the other hand, uses light instead of radio waves, which consumers may trust more. "We use IR light - abundant in nature and very similar to what's emitted from your TV remote control," said Boger. "We point to the UL and other consumer safety certifications that we have. The regulators have placed much more stringent power limits on RF and microwave."

Getting device makers to adopt these technologies is only one hurdle for manufacturers. The largest obstacle is inertia. Most people are fine with just plugging cords into the wall, and Qi chargers are fairly convenient, even though they still need to be plugged in. And consumers may be wary of bringing wireless transmitters into homes that are already filled with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth waves.

"Desktop contactless charging isn't a huge step change from today's wireless charging pads," said Greengart. "And all that assumes that consumers will accept the notion that this is safe, which may be a hard psychological conditioning barrier to overcome."

For this to really take off with consumers, it will need to be embedded in devices from major manufacturers, not as an add-on kit. Even then there will be a lot of friction on the chargingside - ceiling installation and roving robots are not ideal, and desktop contactless charging isn't a huge step change from today's wireless charging pads. And all that assumes that consumers will accept the notion that this is safe, which may be a hard psychological conditioning barrier to overcome.

The main appeal of charging over the air is that you can be anywhere in your house or office, and your phone, smart home device or other gadget could be receiving power all the time. You simply wouldnt need to charge it consciously.

But in order for true wireless charging to take off with consumers, Greengart says that it will need to be embedded in devices form major manufacturers and now sold as an add-on kit.

From the looks of things here at CES, 2020 will be yet another proving ground year for wireless charging over the air. Well likely see commercial deployments in places like restaurant bathrooms and retail shelves before consumers get their hands on this technology, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Now 2021, that could be a different story...

Excerpt from:
The state of wireless power: When will charging happen over the air? - Tom's Guide

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Located in Brooklyn, New York, the Basilica of Regina Pacis is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese that is a spiritual hub for members of the parish of St Rosalia-Regina Pacis. It once again turned to Monte Bros to upgrade its sound system recently, leading to the installation of three Powersoft Quattrocanali 1204 amplifier platforms.

Acoustically, it's extremely difficult to design a sound system for a church like the Basilica of Regina Pacis, said Monte Bros Steve Minozzi, who designed the sound system. It's a long, rectangular space with a lot of hard surfaces, a concave ceiling and a concave sanctuary. That breaks every acoustic rule in the book but we have to make the sound system work for the space and it has to work automatically. So, when it comes to amplification in these kinds of basilicas, we need a heavy lifter and the Powersoft Quattrocanali 1204 is a heavy lifter.

Monte Bros was chosen to install the system due its partnership with the Basilica of Regina Pacis. It installed a sound system in 1989, which was upgraded in 2002. Heat dispersion is another problem in big installs like this because they need a lot of amplifiers, Minozzi continued. That was a main reason we upgraded the system using the Quattrocanali 1204. Inside the church, it's a beautiful space. When you put in a new sound system, you obviously don't want to desecrate the appearance in any way. One of the important features of the Powersoft Quattrocanali 1204 is that it senses changes in ohmage, because the amplifiers have to deal with changes due to capacitance and other anomalies. Since each bank of speakers is on its own Quattrocanali channel, if one speaker goes bad, the amp will automatically sense the change and reajust. That's why we chose Powersoft.

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The Basilica of Regina Pacis amplifies its sound - Worship AVL

Charlotte artist John W. Love, Jr has received a major $100,000 award from Creative Capital for the production of a new piece.

John's project The Cathedral of Messes is part installation and part performance. Stylistically, it's the scene of a crime: a mystic has assassinated his inner saboteur. Crystalline enshrined shoes and body parts of sculpted black salt float in a sea of video, literature, and performance in an installation dedicated to obliterating a virus known as shame.

The 2020 Creative Capital Awards were awarded to 35 projects representing 41 individual artists, each receiving a total of $100,000, split between direct project funding and career development services. Awardees, selected by a nine-member interdisciplinary panel, span a range of genres, including literature, performance, the visual arts, moving image, technology, and socially engaged art. The full value of this years awards is $3.5 million.

Creative Capital has a long history of supporting innovative, incisive workone that goes back 20 years, to the organizations founding in the wake of the National Endowment for the Arts cancellation of most of its individual artistic grants during the culture wars of the '90s. In that time, Creative Capital has committed over $48 million in project funding and advisory support to 596 projects representing 741 artists and has worked with more than 20,000 artists in over 800 creative communities across the country.

FULL PRESS RELEASE

ANNOUNCING THE 2020 CREATIVE CAPITAL AWARDS

35 Innovative Projects Receive $3.5 Million in Total Support

These 35 projects, by 41 individual artists, were drawn from a pool of more than 4,000 applications and selected by a nine-member, multidisciplinary panel composed of awardees from previous years, expert curators, producers, and other arts professionals. In a departure from traditional awards panels, Creative Capitals multi-step review process is not delineated by genrethe nine panelists deliberated together to select the awardees regardless of field.

Though these artists come to us from very different backgrounds, work in different fields, and explore a wide range of subjects, they share a dedication to pushing boundaries, both ours and their own, saidSuzy Delvalle, Creative Capitals President & Executive Director. We are thrilled to be supporting them and their work, and cannot wait to see these projects grow and mature to fruition.

The projects that earned 2020 Creative Capital Awards are based in 15 different states and territories, from Louisiana to Alaska, Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania. Of the 41 artists, over 76 percent identify as people of color, 54 percent identify as women, and 12 percent as trans or gender nonbinary; two identify as being disabled. They range in age from 27 to 67.

This years projects mark the first of a new decade, and the 20th anniversary of Creative Capital. In planning for the decade to come, Creative Capital recently announced its move to a new fundraising model and the launch of a 20th Anniversary Fund, evidence of the organizations continued growth and evolution in the service of artists, their work, and their communities. The organization is fortunate to receive dedicated project funding for the visual arts from the Andy Warhol Foundation, performing arts from the Doris Duke Foundation, and racial justice from the Surdna Foundation.

Drawing from the principles of venture capital to develop innovative work in the cultural sphere, Creative Capital seeks out bold, groundbreaking projects and provides the artists behind them with the tools they need to realize their visions and build sustainable careers. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has supported 741 artists with nearly $50 million in funding; professional development opportunities; expert consulting; artist retreats and gatherings; and more, with the aim of fostering and developing artistic exchange and a thriving cultural commons across the United States.

Applications for the next cycle of Creative Capital Awards will open February 1, 2020. As part of Creative Capitals move to annual award cycles, beginning in 2020, artists will submit one full application in February with a complete budget and six work samples. This is a shift from previous years, in order to make the application process more efficient. The next group of Creative Capital Awards will be announced in late 2020, and annually at that time thereafter.

2020 PanelistsCassils | Creative Capital Awardee; ArtistKen Chen | Executive Director, Asian American Writers WorkshopGina Duncan | Vice President, Film and Strategic Programming, Brooklyn Academy of MusicCarlos Gutirrez | Executive Director, Cinema TropicalAngela Mattox | Performing Arts Curator; Former Artistic Director, PICALaleh Mehran | Creative Capital Awardee; Professor of Emergent Digital Practices at University of DenverRoderick Schrock | Executive Director, EyebeamStacy Switzer | Curator and Executive Director, FathomersTara Aisha Willis | Associate Curator of Performance, MCA Chicago

About Creative CapitalCreative Capital supports innovative and adventurous artists across the country through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Its pioneering venture philanthropy approach helps artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build more sustainable careers. Since 1999, Creative Capital has committed over $48 million in project funding and advisory support to 596 projects representing 741 artists and has worked with more than 20,000 artists in over 800 creative communities across the country.

Creative Capital receives major support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Toby Devan Lewis, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Acton Family Giving, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Facebook Art Department, New York Community Trust, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Scherman Foundation, William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham, Margaret Silva, Paige West, and over 100 other institutional and individual donors.

For more, visit creative-capital.org.

Press ContactsEd WinsteadDirector, Cultural Counsel(919) 770-6963ed@culturalcounsel.comMichael GibbonsDirector of Marketing & Communications, Creative Capital(212) 598-9900 ext. 238michael@creative-capital.org

2020 Creative Capital Awards

Becca BlackwellBrooklyn, NY The Body Never LiesPerformance Art, Theater

The Body Never Lies is a solo, performance-based theatrical search for a vocabulary beyond language that expresses who we are. Through movement, martial arts, science (a heart monitor), and some fragmented texts in various languages, Becca Blackwell uncovers a new landscape for themselves and the audience to discover identity.

Jibz Cameron & Sue SlagleLos Angeles, CA & Frederick, MDTitanic DepressionMultimedia Performance, Performance Art

Titanic Depression is a multimedia performance with live animation starring Dynasty Handbag, alter ego of artist Jibz Cameron. Using the 1997 film Titanic as a departure point, the work addresses issues of class, gender roles, gratuitous wealth, and the environmental impact of climate change.

Eisa DavisBrooklyn, NYThe EssentialisntPerformance Art, Multimedia Performance

The Essentialisn't troubles expected narratives of the diasporic black feminine and questions the artists relationships to performance and captivity. The work utilizes an innovative combination of song, electronic sound, movement, everyday objects, and reanimated modernist figures from the Harlem Renaissance to cultivate a practice of presence and sovereignty.

Mercedes DorameTijuana, MexicoEclipsing ShadowsWeaashar MoyookmokInstallation, Photography

Mercedes Dorame creates an immersive installation addressing contemporary interpretation of Native Tongva ceremony and our relationship to celestial movements, eclipses, and solstices. The installation includes the creation of a semi-enclosed, domed immersive space, recordings of Tongva music, photograms, and cast concrete sculptures.

Marcia DouglasBoulder, COGenuine Herstory: DocumythographiesLiterary Fiction, Literary Nonfiction

Genuine Herstory: Documythographies is a three-volume, hybrid, and cross-genre writing project culminating with a performance installation. Exploring themes of African diasporic fugitivity and migration, this project layers fiction, poem essays, memoir, visual and material documents, and voicescapesaltering and inscribing, in an effort to excavate and rechart history.

Beka Economopoulos, Jason Jones & Judith LeBlancVashon, WA; Vashon, WA & New York, NYThe Natural History Museum Presents: The Supreme Court of Red Natural HistoryArtistic Activism, Cultural Organizing

The Natural History Museum is an ongoing art intervention that unleashes the power of museums, motivating them to act not as shrines to a civilization in decline, but as agents of change. This new exhibition assembles a collective of accusers within an authoritative architecture to put natural history on trial.

Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi & J Mase IIISeattle, WA & Washington, DCThe Black Trans Prayer Book: A Performative Documentary Performance Art, Experimental Film

The Black Trans Prayer Book: A Performative Documentary explores the lives, reflections, performances, and spiritual journey of the contributors to the Black Trans Prayer Booka collaborative text, co-edited by J Mase III & Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, that explores the healing needs of Black trans people.

Tonya FosterSan Francisco, CAMonkey TalkPoetry, Multimedia

Combining poetry, dialogues, fictive FBI records, and non-fiction prose, Monkey Talk follows a 20th Century artist-philanthropist relationship that is being tracked by government surveillance and a young scholar's curiosity. Focused on the ways that artistic creations act as monitors and are also monitored, the multi-volume project tracks parallel, contesting conversations around race.

Ebony Noelle GoldenNew York, NYJubilee 11213Performance Art, Cultural Organizing

Jubilee 11213 is a multi-generational cultural organizing and community theatre collaboration that advances civic action and creativity practiced at the founding of the Weeksville community.

Randa JarrarLos Angeles, CALunch At GuantanamoLiterary Fiction

Randa Jarrars newest book is a semi-satirical, fantastical novel set in 2045 Guantanamo Bay, inspired by and updating "The Penal Colony," the short story by Franz Kafka. The book envisions a utopic queer futureone that offers its inhabitants peace, liberation, and justice.

Steffani JemisonBrooklyn, NYIn SuccessionVideo Art, Installation

In 1900, The New York Times reported that six tramps formed an acrobatic pyramid, cut a hole in the ceiling, and escaped from the Middlesex County Jail in New Jersey. Working with trained and untrained actors, this body of work considers the precarious and resistant figure of the acrobat.

Tyehimba Jess, Yahdon Israel & Janice A. LoweBrooklyn, NYOlioPoetry, Musical Theater

Olio is a live musical production of the Pulitzer-prize winning book of poems of the same title, presenting the lives of African-American creatives from the Civil War to World War I.

Nikyatu Jusu Gaithersburg, MDNANNYNarrative Film, Experimental Film

In this narrative feature film, Aisha is an undocumented nanny in New York City caring for the privileged child of an Upper East Side family. As she prepares for the arrival of the child she left behind in her native country, a violent presence invades her reality, jeopardizing the American Dream she has so carefully constructed.

Jesse KrimesPhiladelphia, PAMass Incarceration QuiltMultimedia, Artistic Activism

The Mass Incarceration Quilt series focuses on rendering visible people and perspectives hidden by the criminal justice system. Using a variety of participatory art practices, the project aims to reframe public narratives that perpetuate mass incarceration, humanizing those whose lives are bound up in the criminal justice system.

Jasmin Mara Lpez New Orleans, LASilent BeautyDocumentary Film, Installation

Silent Beauty is a personal documentary about Jasmin Lpezs familys history with child sexual abuse and a culture of silence. The work extends as an audio visual installation that features the voices of dozens of survivorsadults and older children with parentsthat have reached out to the artist to share their stories.

John W. Love, Jr.Charlotte, NCThe Cathedral of MessesInstallation, Performance Art

The Cathedral of Messes is the scene of a crime: a mystic has assassinated his inner saboteur. Crystalline enshrined shoes and body parts of sculpted black salt float in a sea of video, literature, and performance in an installation dedicated to obliterating a virus known as shame.

Cannupa Hanska Luger Glorieta, NMFuture Ancestral TechnologiesMultimedia Performance, Experimental Film

Future Ancestral Technologies is an Indigenous-centered approach to making art objects, video, and performance with the intent to influence global consciousness using creative storytelling to radically reimagine the future. Moving science-fiction theory into practice, this methodology conjures innovative life-based solutions that promote a thriving Indigeneity.

Jarrett MellenbruchRoeland Park, KSRedwood PreserveEcological Art, Social Practice

The Redwood Preserve is a land art and social enterprise project to restore the ancient Californian redwood forest obliterated by logging in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The nature preserve would revive biodiversity in the region, while its trees combat climate change by pulling large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.

Amitis MotevalliLos Angeles, CAGolestan RevisitedArtistic Activism, Data Visualization

Golestan Revisited is a multimedia, internationally-accessible online database created to research, reclaim, and rename roses transplanted to Europe during the Crusades from the South and West Asian and North African region (known as SWANA), to symbolize and commemorate women, girls and femmes killedoften while captive in the wars against terror and/or by reactive Islamist occupations.

Mark NowakCanaan, NYWorker Writers School: Mobile UnitPoetry, Social Practice

Worker Writers School: Mobile Unit (WWSMU) expands Mark Nowaks ongoing, twenty-year project of bringing poetry workshops directly to the working class. Like bookmobiles or food trucks, WWSMU visits laundromats, street corners, restaurants near construction sites, bus stops, and other locations that workers frequent to offer brief, intensive poetry writing classes.

Papel MacheteSan Juan, PROn the Eve of AbolitionPuppetry, Theater

Papel Machete proposes a bilingual play in Spanish and English that tells the speculative fiction story of the last prison in the U.S. Using letters from incarcerated people, prison radio shows, puppets, masks, music, and picture storytelling, they present events preceding the final day of the last prison, and the movement which made abolition a reality.

Diane ParagasNew York, NY & Brooklyn, NYThe Three Lives of David WongDocumentary Film, Puppetry

Through a mixture of recreation puppetry, archival interviews, and verit, The Three Lives of David Wong documentary film tells the story of an undocumented Chinese immigrant wrongfully convicted of murder, and the group of activists who came to together to rally for his freedom.

Kamau PattonChicago, ILTelInstallation, Poetry

Tel is a platform for performance, study, and contemplation that will question how the nature of memory has changed in relation to the encroachment of cyberspace, telematics, and transmission technologies. The project name refers to the archeological term for a mound formed by the accumulated remains left by communities occupying a site over time. Tel is experienced through a myriad of disciplines: past iterations have been presented as transmissions, walks, conversations, engagement with archives, and a publication series.

Kumatatu M. Poe Philadelphia, PAterrestrialDance, Multimedia Performance

Terrestrial is a multimedia performance installation with choreography by jumatatu poe that stems from majorette lines that became popular at historically Black universities. Inspired by the hot brown granules in both desert dirt and beach sand, terrestrial is a rigorous imagination of Black humans as earth, epic, and finite.

Randy ReyesOakland, CAEncuentro 33: LINE/AGE | Queer Neuro-Cognitive Architectures Hidden in Plain Site(s)Dance, Social Practice

Encuentro 33 is a multiphase project created in partnership with a core group of Black, Indigenous, First-Generation, Queer, Trans Artists of Color in the Bay Area, nationally, and abroad to develop a series of performances centering ecology, lineage, and ritual through a choreographic lens. These works provide infrastructure for bringing reyes vision of opening La Escuela de Corporealidad y Artes Sutiles to fruition.

Rodrigo ReyesOakland, CAUntitled Rodrigo Reyes DocumentaryDocumentary Film

Set in rural California, director Rodrigo Reyess documentary is moving portrait of the unlikely friendship of two Mexican migrants, told within the frame of the dramatic the clash between systemic forces and personal choices that envelop young, incarcerated men of color in America.This film combines a vibrant exploration of the cinematic form with a strikingly intimate portrait of the fault-lines in our society.

Nathan ShaferAnchorage, AKWintermootMultimedia, Social Practice

Wintermoot incorporates social practice, augmented reality, graphic novels, and digital humanities to form a series of interconnected epic tales of supernatural people from all over Alaska, spanning several generations. As both a mobile app and augmented graphic novel set in an alternate history Alaska, the work tells the stories of characters created in collaboration with other Alaskans, bringing together over 30 languages and cultures.

Tamara Shogaolu Amsterdam, NetherlandsQueer in a Time of Forced MigrationMultimedia, Animation

Queer in a Time of Forced Migration is an animated transmedia series that follows the stories of LGBTQ refugees from Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia across continents and cultures from the 2011 revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa region to the world today.

Jackie SumellNew Orleans, LAThe Prisoner's ApothecaryArtistic Activism, Social Practice

The Prisoner's Apothecary is a travelling project and community-driven strategy dedicated to education, harm-reduction, and healing. An extension of the Solitary Gardens, this project grows plant medicine in collaboration with incarcerated individuals and distributes it to affected communities nationally. The Prisoners Apothecary facilitates the healing potentiality of people we are systematically taught to condemn.

Jawwaad TaylorHouston, TXStart With SelfSculpture, Musical Performance

Start With Self is a sonic stimulation and visual art piece based on scientific research on how certain frequencies stimulate endorphins in the body that lessen pain and relaxes the mind. Jawwaad Taylors project is based on his research and experience with sonic healing as a sickle-cell anemia survivor.

Wendy S. WaltersNew York, NYA Dead White: An Argument Against White PaintLiterary Nonfiction

A Dead Whiteis a book-length polemic against the use of white paint in both interior and exterior spaces. The argument will wind through a wide selection of works in architecture, manufacturing, art history, and consumer culture, engaging narratives related to its effect in the lived environment.

Stephanie Wang-BrealBrooklyn, NYFlorence from OhioDocumentary Film, Video Art

Florence from Ohio is a real-life, genre twisting film about an immigrant Chinese woman, Florence Wang, and her first-generation daughter, Stephanie Wang-Breal. Told through the lens of Florence's St. John Knitwear suits, mother and daughter collectively reimagine and embrace their generational ideas of motherhood, feminism, racism, and assimilation.

Angela WashkoPittsburgh, PAThe Uncasted Queen and Her ProgenyGames, Digital Media

The Uncasted Queen and Her Progeny is an experimental, narrative video game about a legendary drag queen in a post-industrial American city and her many years spent auditioning for competition-based reality television show RuPauls Drag Race. The game presents an underrepresented perspective on reality TVs impact on the queer performance community and explores the question: what happens to the people who get left behind when subversive subcultures go mainstream?

Nia WitherspoonBrooklyn, NYPriestess of TwerkTheater, Multimedia Performance

Inspired by the bad bitches of hip hop, the reproductive justice movement, and the sacred sex workers that graced Egyptian temples, Priestess of Twerk is a black feminist temple of pleasure that presents women, queer, and trans-folks of color with opportunities to re-encounter their sexualities through the lens of the sacred, increasing bodily autonomy, and dispelling toxic masculinity.

Dorian WoodLos Angeles, CALa HillMusical Performance, Performance Art

For over 30 years, Dorian Woods Costa Rican-Nicaraguan grandparents owned a two-story house in South L.A., where they raised three daughtersamong them, Woods mother. La Hill is a cantata that spans the family's history from room to room.

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Local artist awarded $100,000 from Creative Capital for production of new piece - CL Charlotte

The musical sound landscape powered by Microsoft AI from Bjrk is now in New York.

Microsoft

Upon entering the lobby of a hotel in Bowery, a few meters from the New Museum in Manhattan, you can find yourself in a small space where Bjrk's music is played. Fragments of it, environmental, seemingly continuous, random. I am in the hotel lobby, listening. There is a pattern in music. It is connected to a camera on the roof, watching the clouds and birds moving. The composition is driven by AI. The best part is that it is invisible and it works. I stay and listen for an hour.

Bjrk created a new experimental environmental musical piece generated by AI in collaboration with Microsoft, called Korsafn, for the Sister City hotel (a boutique branch of the Ace hotel group). It's the second piece of ambient music here: Julianna Barwick created the hotel's previous environmental sound landscape, also a collaboration of Microsoft, last year. Bjrk's new music installation should remain until the end of this year.

Bjrk's Korsafn is a choral piece generated by algorithms that study cloud and bird patterns from a rooftop camera, but that will also evolve over time, becoming an AI data collection experiment for Microsoft. Since the installation reflects information from the sky, it is almost like an audio skylight or a data driven wind chime. The ongoing computer vision project will also enable Microsoft AI to better recognize dense and fluffy clouds, snow, rain, clear sky and birds in different lighting conditions and seasons.

I'm still resting spiritually from a week of noise CES in Las Vegas, and this little moment with Bjrk digital was something I could have used in the desert. Ryan Bukstein, brand vice president of Atelier Ace Hotel, says sound landscapes driven by artificial intelligence like this could be a future model for hotels and other spaces, rather than repetitive playlists of familiar songs.

I love Bjrk. I love the idea of being immersed in a Bjrk sound landscape.

Bukstein says the project began when Bjrk performed at The Shed in New York last year, and when 50 rooms at the Sister City hotel were home to the Bjrk Icelandic choir for a month while performing the acclaimed Cornucopia concert. "They rehearsed in the restaurant. You would come here, and the choir would be singing in the restaurant, they would be here all day, they would leave their mark on this space." While the Bjrk project was not recorded in Sister City, it says: "I would like to feel that they took part in the vibe."

Korsafn is charming and discreet, and honestly, it simply merges with the background. It's nothing wild, but it fits the hotel. It is fascinating in that regard. Unlike Microsoft's AR installations, such as a 2018 Experience connected with Mel Chin HoloLens In Times Square, this does not require much configuration (or failures). It simply is.

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After an hour, he did not become annoying or too repetitive.

Amy Sorokas, director of Strategic Alliances at Microsoft, helps produce musical art projects using Microsoft technology, with artists ranging from Brian Eno to Muse. He explains that AI updated live, using computer vision to analyze the hotel's rooftop camera, "can find different types of clouds: clusters, nimbus, birds, flocks of birds, a single bird, a plane. And what what we did is to say, now we are continually training our vision service. So we can make him learn over time from the ceiling chamber and the feeding. We can train continuously, so he will learn more about the clouds, learn more about Las seasons change, so next year, when winter comes back, it will be like, & # 39; Oh, yes, winter is back again & # 39 ;, and now the clouds have this kind of shapes and varieties, and the sun it comes to these times. The composition is going to be learned and generated differently based on that change in the level of knowledge of AI. "

The composition is coral, extracted from a variety of recordings and applied to what the camera sees, such as an audio map. I am sitting in the lobby, which has no skylight, and I wonder what will happen to provoke that sudden and growing voice? A bird, maybe?

Strangely, I would love something like that in my living room while I am reading. Or an ever-changing AI-driven soundtrack for my headphones, while I move, work and travel. If you're curious to listen, Sister City is broadcasting the soundtrack live along with the power of the rooftop camera to which the music is connected.

Or you can visit yourself. I want to one day generate music based on my life, in my ears, on my daily trip to New Jersey.

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I had a great time in the sound landscape of the lobby of a Bjrk hotel generated by IA - NewsDio