AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

The following article was posted on the Art4Development Yahoo! Groups listserv. I think it's fascinating.

- Unique Arts-Science Research Program Results Published

LONDON, ENGLAND.-The results of a unique program that enables
artists and scientists to work together on research projects have
been published. They include: Capturing the acoustic fingerprints of
a building with the longest echo in the world to create a virtual
sound landscape, which allows composers to create new work specially
tailored to a specific venue; Choreographer Wayne McGregor, working
with neuroscientists and psychologists from Cambridge University to
explore the relationship between a dancer's mind and their body;
Artist and scientists developing new "shape memory" materials for
use in art.

The Arts and Science Research Fellowships supported by Arts Council
England and Arts and Humanities Research Council allow artists to
work closely with leading scientists over the course of a year. The
fellowships support innovative research that must be of benefit to
both science and arts communities.

Twenty-seven fellowships have been awarded so far and the findings
from many of these are featured in a special section of Leonardo,
the leading journal for readers interested in the application of
contemporary science and technology to the arts.

Artist Damian Murphy acoustically surveyed the interior of a number
of venues to create site specific virtual acoustic landscapes, that
will help composers tailor their work to use the fixed acoustic
qualities of a venue rather than let it limit the way their work is
heard by an audience.

To achieve this Murphy captured a series of room impulse response
profiles (the acoustic fingerprint of a particular environment for a
sound source and listener located at a specific position within it).

At present recording room impulse response profiles � or sound
mapping - is standardised. Murphy considered how composers might
want an audience to experience a piece of work they were creating in
a particular venue. He carried out much more thorough sound mapping,
taking thousands of measurements at each location, to create
detailed virtual acoustic landscapes of individual venues.

The venues Murphy surveyed were York Minster; Maes-Howe in Orkney,
one of the finest chambered cairns in Europe, dating to 3000BC; The
Hamilton Mausoleum, Scotland, which claims to have the longest echo
of any building in the world at 15 seconds; and the 14th Century St
Andrews Church in Lydington.

Using his virtual landscapes Murphy created two sound works The King
of all the Winds for Maes-Howe in Orkney and A Sense of Place for
York Minster.

Choreographer Wayne McGregor and Random Dance company joined with a
team of neuroscientists and psychologists from Cambridge University
in a exploration of the relationship between a dancer's mind and
their body.

This included researchers using highly accurate motion capture
equipment to analyse the accuracy of dancer's repetition of learned
motions, and interviewing dancers to probe their levels of
introspection and awareness during the creative process.

The work carried out was a central influence on AtaXia,
choreographed by McGregor for Random Dance and premiered at Sadlers
Wells. The scientists believe their findings can provide new
perspectives on the treatment of patients with long-term serious
neurological disorders, including the condition, Ataxia, which
affects balance, limbs or eye movement and speech.

Artist Simon Biggs worked with researchers from Cambridge University
on a project that focused on the development of new kinds of "shape-
memory" materials. These materials have the capacity to move between
physical states within the microstructure of the material itself.

They began creating interactive work using LCEs, a polymer-based
material similar to LCDs, that changes when energy is applied. Where
LCDs change visual appearance, LCE changes its physical form.

LCEs as yet have no commercial use and had not been used until now
by artists.

Biggs and the scientists worked together with chemical wet labs,
fume cupboards, centrifuges and ovens and created an LCE skin
supported and controlled by a shape memory alloy (a nickel-titanium
alloy called NiTinol).

Following this work Biggs created IDfone, an installation and
networked artwork currently touring the UK. He is working on
Metropolis, a large-scale interactive installation.

Other projects carried out through the Arts and Science Research
Fellowships include:

Artist Alejandro Vinao and Ian Cross from the Centre for Music and
Science at the University of Cambridge crated RALPH, a computer
interface that enables live musicians and computers to play together
without compromising the integrity of music or the performance.

Artist Sol Sneltvedt and neuroscientist Michael O'Shea attempted to
visualise the workings of the brain in an audio-visual installation.

The project Metamorphosis and Design looked at similarities between
biological "design" and accepted aesthetics in society and was
carried out by artist Heather Barnett and scientists from the School
of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex.

Artist Jo Joelson collaborated with the 2006 Royal Astronomical
Society gold medal winner Professor Stanley Cowley and the Radio and
Space Plasma Physics Group at the University of Leicester. The
resulting work, Little Earth: a solar-planetary investigation, looks
at how developments in technology have affected the way scientists
and artists perceive and represent natural phenomena.

Writer Alan Wall and physicist Gron Tudor Jones examined the use of
metaphor in science.

The findings of the Arts Council England and Arts and Humanities
Research Council Science Research Fellowships are published in
Leonardo, Volume 39, Number 5.