www.lovelyweather.com: An Interactive Audio-Visual Installation

www.lovelyweather.com: An Interactive Audio-Visual Installation

Salman Bakht (Media Arts & Technology, UCSB)
Christopher Jette (Music, UCSB)
Alejandro Casazi (Art, UCSB)

May 24-27
Elings Hall, 2nd Floor (exact location to be determined)

www.lovelyweather.com is a work originally designed for viewing on the internet but presented here as an interactive audiovisual installation. This work, part of a series titled LovelyWeather, uses a database of field recordings and digital photographs taken along a nature walk in the Ellwood Mesa area to form a virtual audio-visual space navigable by computer mouse. www.lovelyweather.com examines the relationship between the methods of navigation used in web-based media and the process of exploration that an artist and audience experience in the creation, presentation, and interpretation of an artwork.

In this work, the user is presented with a collage of environmental sounds and a rectangular frame containing a set of irregularly distributed images. Larger background images overlap and blend with each other, while smaller more distinct foreground images sit in front of the background. The sound layers function similarly, with a set of distinct foreground sound “objects” played over a consistent although changing background sound “field.” Moving the computer mouse, the user navigates horizontally or vertically, similar to a camera’s pan and tilt, within a single virtual location. After clicking on an image, the user is transported to a different location entirely as images and sounds are replaced.

www.lovelyweather.com draws inspiration from the field of soundscape composition (particularly the Presque Rien series by Luc Ferrari), interactive computer works (riverIsland by digital poet John Cayley), and theoretical works on the continuum of representational and abstract art including Wassily Kandinski’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Visual Performing and Media Arts Award.