From Future Flow (Fringecore 2013) Flow Six: I am the Spirit The Sound of the Soul “I saw that sound need not be understood simply as the execution of preordained gestures, and that it can be viewed as a process of inquiry, a path of action, a deliberate sonorous exploration­construction of the world.” ­ Vijay Lyer ‐ On Improvisation, temporality and Embodied Experience This piece has no relationship with the film of the same name directed by Stephen Olson, which I have to say I can highly recommend and pays homage to the remarkable Fez Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco. As a film, it would be even better if it featured the famous Master Musicians of Jajouka and as a festival, it is second only to the Festival in the Desert and Tuareg culture festival (featuring the Blue Men of the desert), just past Timbuktu in Mali. Yet, there is perhaps, an overarching similarity between the context of the film and my meaning in the title, in terms of the depth of spiritual energy that the sounds our body and emotions can generate. Maybe our exposure to such a plethora of sounds and atmospheres throughout our lives creates the spiritual composition that we effuse as an expression of our very being. Writing this my sonic aura is injected with those sounds from Jajouka that I visited so many years ago (in the footsteps of Bowles and Burroughs and the Stone’s Brian Jones and more recent conversations about it with Lee Ranaldo, after he and his wife Leah visited. My mood and body are feeling trance‐like, surreal, yet my thoughts are required to focus on the future and how important it will be for us to understand and use our inner sounds for learning about our physical, intellectual and emotional states and then having the capability to use them to adapt better to our surroundings, to play a smarter role in life’s symphony. My idea of The Sound of Soul relates to the use of sound generated by our “Self” in any form (DNA, body sounds, nature, emotions, speech, gesture, movement, etc) to create outputs that assist in a better understanding of human behavior, our environment and our future development. Whilst the ideas of bio / collaborative emotion mapping, affective computing, nanobotic interfaces, motes, wireless sensors and MIDI systems all used for re‐ contextualizing behavior, psychotherapy, altering brain states, creating personalized environments, vibrational medicine, extending the “Self” or developing learning tools, seems far removed from the village of Jajouka or the pastoral Tuareg nomads, there is little doubt that the benefits of being able to more fully reconnect, integrate and experience the spirit of our environment and humanness is a worthy ambition for us all. It is as though exploding Dr. Rudolf Steiner’s body‐based model of human psycho‐spiritual wellbeing ‐ a model based upon human being as interrelated energetic systems encompassing physical body, life sources, and thinking and feeling forces. It is said that one of the great revelations of 20th Century sciences is that all existence can be broken down into simple wave functions. Every voice, sound, photon, and elementary particle rings with its own unique wave signature. Understanding and using these wave forms and their resonant frequency is the cornerstone of a new paradigm that can ultimately draw us closer to our humanness. If it is true that our voices are a true reflection of the multi‐faceted energy patterns that compose our being, then our inner sounds should give us an even closer look. The voice contains more data and is more individualized than a human thumbprint. However it is often difficult to connect our visible manifestation with our inner reality. Accordingly, new studies and software deal primarily with capturing the power and integrity of intent. This involves technologies such as scalar wave and voice / sound analysis and adaptive sensors, absorption, data imprinting on a quantum level, biofeedback and mapping. Much of the current work is aimed at mind‐body balance / harmony and self‐empowerment, but I am equally interested in the impact it can have on improving our urban development and environment architecture, child growth, ability to experience events and objects in more depth and clarity, capturing nature and biomimicry and extending our consciousness and understanding of inner reality. If capturing the integrity or spirit of the sounds and voice we produce is critical, then the use of affective computing to achieve this is evolving the accuracy and impact of the outputs. If we assume that emotional information is carried in the humanspeech, semantics and prosody and that semantics (what has been said) is a more obvious expression of emotion and that speech prosody (how was it said) holds more detailed emotional information and that prosody combines nonsemantic cues in spoken language, such as: fundamental frequency (pitch), loudness, rhythm, formant structure of speech sounds, intonation, understanding the combination of what we hear together with the intent or the essence will make responsive actions all the more powerful. Encoding and decoding is focused on the six basic emotions (anger, joy sadness, fear, disgust and surprise). Whether, we are seeking to improve communications, learning, behavior, environment or anything else, the capturing of the “sound of the soul” will give us a better platform for creative response and adaptation. So let’s look at some of the exciting new developments and applications that will ultimately provide us with a better inner and outer “operating” environment. In Future Frequencies, I wrote about Golan Levin’s work converting sound into visuals from his project Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice, using an augmented‐ reality speech‐visualization system. His later work Messa di Voce, touched on themes of abstract communication, synaesthetic relationships, cartoon language, and writing and scoring systems, within the context of a sophisticated, playful, and virtuosic audiovisual narrative, based upon the intersection of human generated sounds, delivered visually with unpredictable spontaneity. Also in Future Frequencies, I wrote about the work of Steve Tanza, whom I have been following for over a decade. His projects related to the improvement of our environment and urban development through a better understanding of the human role and interface is second to none. Here I look at a few of the many projects he has conducted that specifically look at the essential structure of our environment, how we as humans fit in and what can be done to improve our lot. Steve is very concerned with using our emotions and reactions to generate his outputs. The first is titled Sensity – part of the Emergent City series. These are artworks made from the data that is collected across the urban and environment infrastructure. A network of sensors, some fixed, and some embedded, collects data illustrating the movement of people, impressions, pollution in the air, the vibrations and sounds of buildings, etc. They represent emergent social sculptures visualizing the emotional state of the city. The sensors also interpret the micro‐data of the city. The outputs are being used to create installations and sculptural artefacts that informs the world and creates new meaningful experiences, as well as aiding urban development and resource. Sensity is a highly technical project that's will give vast amounts of information about the fabric of out cities, which enable new metaphors and creative interpretations within city space. The sensors are positioned across the city and they communicate will one another in a network. The data can also be used to create visualisations in an open source environment. Online users are able to re‐ interpret the data and interrogate the various sensors in the network, so being part of the future planning process. Representations of these datasets will allow unique understanding of the urban environment and environment in real time. Motes are used to collect the data. The 'motes' are tiny wireless sensor boards that gather data and communicate to the central server. The real world is monitored and the data stored in an archive retrieval system. Motes and sensor boards sense the micro incidents of change in the weather, the noise traffic flows and people and interactive communications about certain predetermined icons. In similar vein is Stanza’s Soundcities piece allows the audience the possibility to remix the hundreds of samples recorded from cioties and people around the world. The website provides a series of online mixing desks where you can mix these sounds. Soundcities uses city‐recorded soundscapes from world cities made over the last six years as open source sounds. Another project projected in multiple cities across the globe is Biocities, which deals with the city experience is a web of connected networks and multi layered threaded paths that condition us to the emotional state of the city space. In essence, the city fabric is a giant multi user multi data sphere. The patterns we make, the forces we weave, are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re‐ imagined and sourced for information. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world. Sonic City is a mobile music application that turns the city into a musical interface. A study with participants using the system in their everyday settings showed how Sonic City mediates a new type of personal experience of urban space and embeds electronic music making in the everyday. Sonic City and the notion of mobile music making into perspective, describes how the characteristics of this type of systems affect user behavior and experience, and discusses implications for this emerging field. It is a wearable system that turns the city into an interface for real time electronic music making. It enables its user to create a personal soundscape of live electronic music by walking through and interacting with urban environments. The system consists of a small laptop computer, a microphone, headphones, a micro‐ controller, a MIDI interface, and a number of sensors (sensing light, metal, movement, proximity, sound level, a person’s inner sounds and speech, etc). The system gathers information about the userʼs actions and surrounding context with sensors worn on the body and a layer of context and action recognition. This data controls the audio processing of live urban sounds collected by the microphone. Resulting music is output through headphones in real time and in the context in which it is created, as the user is walking. Mobility through shifting urban context becomes a large‐scale musical gesture. This system improving one’s relationship and emotions towards an individual’s living environment. Another piece is Lifeforms, ‐ which was originally a series of generated paintings, based on the Steve’s sampled and sequenced DNA profile. This work is my DNA portrait. Steve’s DNA was sequenced originally in 2003, but he has subsequently made slight changes and incorporated more data from my DNA sequences. Steve incorporated audio to play along sequences of my DNA string. Since the original work, Steve has sequenced other people’s DNA for the purpose of demonstrating how we differ and then mapping this data against various environments in order to demonstrate how to improve their functionality and compatibility. Moving on from Steve Tanza is BioMapping ‐ a project by Christian Nold, an artist in London,, which explores new ways that we as individuals can make use of the information we can gather about our own bodies. Bio Mapping is a community mapping project in which over the last four years with more than 1500 people have taken part in. Instead of security technologies that are designed to control our behavior, this project envisages new tools that allow people to selectively share and interpret their own bio data. The Bio Mapping tool allows the wearer to record their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. This can be used to plot a map that highlights point of high and low arousal. By sharing this data we can construct maps that visualize where we as a community feel stressed and excited. It will impact our perceptions of our community and environment change when we become aware of our own and each other’s intimate body states and allow us to create communities that are better harmonized for living. The project has already generated emotion maps for Greenwich and Stockport (UK), and San Francisco. Multiple countries are following this lead as a way of improving city and sustainable environment development based upon biofeedback from human spatial engagement and reaction. Companies such as City Mine in Brussels help create the physical interfaces that drive the interventions. The Biomapping work has led to some very exciting projects and conferences such as work by the international center BIOS, on regenerative medicine, social aspects of the neurosciences and psychopharmacology, biosecurity, biopolitics, bioeconomics, translational biology and bioethics. Also important, but very different is Walled Garden, the 2‐day international conference on communities & networks post Web2.0, which took place November 2008 in Amsterdam. The conference addressed issues of identity, mobile communities and networks in and even featured gated and closed communities. The goal was to start to sketch a future public garden. The 75 participants were divided among 8 working groups that considered issues such as identity, space, interaction, communication, etc. Other projects using biomapping and affective computing based upon sound include technologies such as Biological Marker of Auditory Processing, is a diagnostic tool objectively measures whether a child’s nervous system is able to accurately translate sounds into brain waves and monitors the child’s intellectual and emotional reaction to external and inner sounds. It is expected to become one of the most important resources for learning disabilities specialists trying to identify appropriate treatments for children with dyslexia and other language‐based learning disabilities. Robotica and robotic interfaces are installations using controlled autonomous players, robots that navigate their own space to make music and visuals or provide interactive spaces for visitors at performances and exhibitions. As they move around they trigger a database of sounds or interact with sound, gestures, speech, etc by participants. The movement of the robots also controls live dynamic data and web feeds from other spaces that can be mixed and are projected into the installation space, via a series of projectors. These images are live real time live updated 3d models of human interaction, which are controlled by the movement of the robot. The robots can be programmed to evoke a multiplicity of sensory responses and can be used to optimize and harmonize the human’s interaction, engagement and participation This helps us better understand and design our environment. YMYI (You Move You Interact) is an interactive installation, where one is supposed to build up a body language dialogue with an artificial system so as to effectively achieve a synchronized performance between the real user´s body and the virtual object itself. The project aims at exploring a spatial sphere, where the user/performer is invited to develop his own creative inspiration based on his own body gestures and movements. Here we are dealing with two key conceptions ‐ narrative and image. Underlying these concepts, in‐between the dual dimension of the human body and its perception of itself and the surrounding environment. Interestingly, scientist Antonio Damasio constituted a resourceful enlightenment to the scope of this work. "The images (mental patterns) may be conscious or unconscious (...) The unconscious images are never directly accessible. The images access is to be provided in a single first person perspective (my images, everyone´s images). On the other hand, the neural patterns are to be provided in a third person perspective. If I considered the possibility of observing my own neural patterns resorting to advanced technology, I would be always doing it in the third person perspective." ‐Damasio Antonio R. (2000). The Feeling of What Happens. Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. P.362 A Harvest Book Harcourt Inc. With YMYI, The dramatic emphasis of the performance deepens as gestures embed themselves in sounds created by the body, like breathing, walking, standing up, hiding, as if one were dealing with a contemporary dance performance. The huge number of particles moving around the user, fill in the scene background. They seem to have a life of their own, featuring living, dynamic and electrifying properties. Such particles tend to concentrate themselves in the edges of both the superior and inferior limbs. Feet and hands become a converging magnet able to attract and join them in a collective “bubble”. It is as if they behaved as a physical extension of the user´s body or embodiment. Thus, both particles and user form a single, united element, shining glamorously throughout the interface. In this interactive scope, the user realizes that light/soft movements bring on greater interactivity and emotion. The essence of the interactive experience is actually the sound. In the YMYI, we experience a synchronizing sound reactive to the gestures dynamics of the user him /herself. The sound emits low in pitch or sharp frequencies, responding in real time to the user position, whether the user is standing (upwards) or sitting/hiding (downwards), respectively. Right on the top of the canvas, a sensitive sound to the touching facility of the user has the ability to project a sonorous lightning flash whose energy goes through the inner self. the sound is a sole element which travels in harmony through the flowing gestures of the user within the interactive space so as to provide guidance and “affordance” to the user himself, in its artistic dimension. If the user stops moving, the sound concentrates in itself an ongoing powerful energy which provides a growing amplitude, whether in low pitch or sharp frequencies, which on their turn, become reactive to and at the same time dependent on the inferior or superior position of the user´s embodiment limbs, respectively. The sound provides a multimodal enrichment to the whole interactive experience and creates by itself together with image and movement an interactive guide to the appropriation, exploration, knowledge and live experience of the artefact. YMYI not only teaches us about interaction with our environment, but ultimately could lead to the development of a completely new form of human‐machine interface and the way in which we explore and leverage our life experiences. " Maryliz Smith is an international performance artist, composer and music educator. and a transformational hypnotherapist who works with the language of the subconscious through various means to discover one's inner resources. Sandtray is an expressive play tool used by children, adolescents, adults, couples, families and groups. Miniature objects, sand and water become the field of expression for the human consciousness. Her work is used to help those suffering with cancer and other life‐threatening diseases, depression, etc. creating courses designed to enable individuals to be inventive, daring, self‐expressing people. Transformational Hypnotherapy is a heart‐centered method used to discover our inner resources. Maryliz’s methods include Sounding, Sandplay and Attunement. Sounding awakens resonating fields in people physically, emotionally, and spiritually, through deep listening practices (see Pauline Oliveros piece below) and other approaches, which develop a person's ability to be comfortable in the unknown. Sandplay involves miniature images, sand and water becoming the field of expression for the human consciousness as clients create patterns, worlds, and/or dramatic play processes in the sandtray. Such play helps create shared visions and community with others. Attunement is an energetic healing art and spiritual practice one that connects with the systems of the body directly through contact points such as our inner sense of sound, allowing health and well‐being to be experienced on very deep and fundamental levels. Dreamers of the world unite From hypnotism to dreams. I thought I would finish this section with a bit of fun. A recent web-based Swedish artist invited us to experience an artwork that takes place inside your dreams… I am talking about broadcasting sounds with the intention of influencing the contents of your dreams. The project is based on sleep- and dream-research, indicating that external stimuli like sound, smell and touch can be experienced also during sleep. Our dreams are shaped by an inner world, as well as by experiences that we have had during the day and the external stimuli we are exposed to during sleep. While dreaming we get in contact with sub- and pre-conscious layers of our soul. Using sound you can influence your dreams. Welcome to take part in this artwork that takes place in your bedroom and where the stage is your dream go to http://www.jimpalt.org/dream Conclusion This last piece may seem crazy, but when undertaking an assignment for Harlequin Books a few years back, I was creating environments and formats for the experiencing of future women’s fiction and actually created a more advanced version of this, which included interactive narration and overhead visualization. The rest for confidentiality reasons, remains a secret, but without doubt, our growing ability to explore and utilize the subconscious to expand and deepen our engagement and experience of our inner and external environments and communities. As I stated at the outset, my idea of The Sound of Soul relates to the use of sound generated by our “Self” in any form (DNA, body sounds, nature, emotions, speech, gesture, movement, etc) to create outputs that assist in a better understanding of human behavior, our environment and our future development. Whether it is through the use of Stanza’s amorphoscapes, or biomapping, emotional robotics, hypnotics or deep listening, the ability to harmonize our inner and outer worlds in order to improve our interaction and emotional relationship with our communities or redesign the living architecture or sustainability elements, so as to make living all the more enjoyable, the use of sound in particular, helps fuel a positive attitude towards the future. Even the villagers in Fez and Tuareg nomads know that. While I am writing this, I am listening to the Congolese group Konono No1, live from the Couleur Café in Brussels. I can feel the sound of my soul resonating. Persuasion: Sound of the Soul One of my favorite electronic musicians/composers is Pauline Oliveros. I can fill a row of my CD rack with her albums, each of which is so different that it reflects her belief that since the environment is by nature unpredictable, her music is indeterminate—that is, it is affected by elements of chance. Beyond her incredible performances, Pauline is a humanitarian and seen as a pioneer of American music. Through Deep Listening Pieces and her earlier seminal Sonic Meditations, Oliveros introduced the concept of incorporating all environmental sounds into musical performance, including those created by our inner body. To make a pleasurable experience of this requires focused concentration, skilled musicianship and strong improvisational skills, which are the hallmarks of Oliveros’ form. In Sonic Meditations, she referred to four. Procedures in approaching sounds, namely: 1. Actually making sounds, 2. Actively imagining sounds, 3. Listening to present sounds, 4. Remembering sounds. She believes that sounds/music could produce healing, heightened states of awareness and expanded consciousness, changes in physiology and psychology, and new forms of communal relationships. Accordingly, Pauline Oliveros is known for meditative compositions that are inspired by the inner sounds and psychic states of the life (or in some cases inanimate objects) around her‐‐a process she calls Deep Listening. To put it another way: some people ruminate on existential states; she mics them. And she also broadcasts them in diverse ways: around the world, across the dial, through the Internet, and even, via satellite, to the moon. Explained in her own words: “Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is. As a composer I make my music through Deep Listening” Oliveros sees sound and music as never‐ending sources of fascination and of connection with the world around me and inside of her. She claims to hear sound and music with both her inner ear as well as her outer ear. By practicing these forms of consciously mitigated listening, one learns to remove cognitive filters in order to experience deeper forms of audition. This form of "nonjudgmental perception" was first introduced to western art music in the 1950s by John Cage, who appropriated it from Zen Buddhism. Oliveros' first contact with Zen came in the 1960s, and she remains a practicing Tibetan Buddhist. Global and focal listening are forms of attention Oliveros employs in Deep Listening to increase awareness of the external and internal worlds, and of the cognitive processes that shape their relationship. Often, this listening then turns to creating. Given there is infinitude of detail in every sound, one of the greatest mysteries of nature and human perception is that the infinitude of the microcosmic comes full circle and weds itself as a mirror of the macrocosmic. Since Oliveros views creativity as fundamental to human dignity, she expands the role of the artist, assigning to her the specific function of helping others to be creative—a goal central to the Sonic Meditations. Her Buddhist instincts lead her to celebrate the "four noble practices" through which humans can obtain subsequent "rebirth" in the Brahman heaven. The four practices ("apramanas") represent the perfection of: 1. 2. 3. 4. Sympathy, which gives happiness to all living beings Compassion, which removes pain from living beings Joy, the enjoyment of the sight of others who have attained happiness Equanimity, being free from attachment to everything She sees these as central outputs from her work. As William Osborne points out in his excellent article on Oliveros, titled Sounding the Abyss of Otherness: “On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level.” Pauline Oliveros’ work is about open us up to a future of harmony and positive believe and meaning. As she says: “We listen in order to interpret ourselves and out world and to experience meaning. Our world is made of vibrations as we are made of vibrations. Vibration connects us with all beings and connects us to all things.” Time to get connected. “Through Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening I finally know what harmony is." John Cage 1989