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Archive-2021

Recreating technology: The Light Guitar and The Art of Elen Nas

A guitar that makes music but not sound. Now that’s something to wrap your brain about. Dr. Russel Stoneback, who conceptualized the idea of light guitar brought it to life in his graduate studies, and explains to us the physics behind it . Through Russel’s narrative, we witness how the pursuit of his musical passion led to the creation of the ‘light guitar’ and to discover its existence in the grander universe

Thursday, June 24 2021 

Participants:

  • Elen Nas
  • Russel Stoneback
  • Karen Doore
  • Taylor Hinchliffe
  • Ayen Kuol
  • Mahmoud Elkarmalawy
  • Vaishnavi Valavil
  • Omkar Ajnadkar
  • Cameron Countryman
  • Beatrice Perez,
  • Azal Amer 

A guitar that makes music but not sound. Now that’s something to wrap your brain about.  Dr. Russel Stoneback, who conceptualized the idea of light guitar brought it to life in his graduate studies, and explains to us  the physics behind it . Through Russel’s narrative, we witness  how the pursuit of his musical passion led to the creation of  the ‘light guitar’ and to discover its existence in the grander universe

Similar to the sound wavelengths that are emitted when you blow over a bottle opening, the light guitar works by making electrons generate the same wavelengths as those generated when a guitar makes music in a similar fashion.  All you need is a hole/aperture, an accompanying conductive sphere, and and an electromagnetic field. The structure of the light guitar  happens to repeat itself in different systems of the universe: Light guitar physics is seen in the system between earth, its magnetic-fields and the opening at the aurora and   in the holes in the sun’s corona and coronal sphere.Light guitar physics could also explain the consistent frequency ‘humm’ that is emitted from Perseus Cluster black hole.  

Word Cloud of the Watering Hole

It doesn’t end there. To make musical sense of the wavelength data emitted from the light guitar, Dr. Russel recreated the principles from data flow of apple’s garage band , and the line 6 pocket pod  guitar effects processor which eventually led to the creation of PYSAT- Python Satellite analysis tool kit – that functions as a simple , flexible and effective interface for analyzing any data set  

Dr Russell isn’t the only one who brought to our attention the recreation of technology in creative practice. Dr. Elen Nas, Brazillian based artist and newest member of the ArtSci lab gave us a refreshing introduction to her work. She has explored the definition of technology as her work transitioned through the use of various technological forms. “Technology is like any type of language that is tentative to translation and imagination and what we perceive” states Dr. Nas. In her art work, she used various forms of technology , from her opera trained vocal chords, to Raspberry pi’s and image generation software . She showed to us how she made innovative uses of her art form in interaction with people, and natural elements and environments around her .In her art, Dr. Nas has expressed her tenacity to challenged rigid ideas of what is defined as ‘good art’ . She describes her work as requiring collective intelligence and her accomplishments as a result of the ‘cultural capital’ she had by acknowledging the magnitude of shared knowledge and people involve in sharing as well as giving back to the shared spaces. We discussed the role of mirror Neurons in collective spaces and saw how mirror neuronal responses were sometimes effective and sometimes not in Dr. Nas’ art experiments. What are the factors that influence the responsiveness of our mirror Neurons within shared spaces?  Perhaps Dr. Nas work can inform how we ‘play’ and interact in here in our shared Watering Hole space..

In her art, Dr. Nas has expressed her tenacity to challenged rigid ideas of what is defined as ‘good art’ . She describes her work as requiring collective intelligence and her accomplishments as a result of the ‘cultural capital’ she had by acknowledging the magnitude of shared knowledge and people involve in sharing as well as giving back to the shared spaces. We discussed the role of mirror Neurons in collective spaces and saw how mirror neuronal responses were sometimes effective and sometimes not in Dr. Nas’ art experiments. What are the factors that influence the responsiveness of our mirror Neurons within shared spaces?  Perhaps Dr. Nas work can inform how we ‘play’ and interact in here in our shared Watering Hole space..

Conversation Sentiment for Watering Hole

Technology , creativity in art and in science, music without sound ,Helmholtz resonances, mirror neuronic responses  in performance art ,and in human dynamics. How do we piece it all together? Join the conversation of us- every Thursday at the watering Hole (Now called the O.A.S.E.S ) 4-6pm.