Arch-OS - i-DAT / Mike Phillips & Eduardo Reck Miranda
Cybrid: Software for buildings
Arch-OS is an Operating System for Cybrid or mixed reality architectures. Arch-OS, software for buildings, is being developed to manifest the social, technological and environmental life of a building and provide artists, engineers and scientists with a unique environment for developing transdisciplinary research and production. Arch-OS is being integrated into the fabric of four new buildings of the Peninsula Medical School distributed across the South West of England. Arch-OS extends the social and learning communities of these individual and distributed spaces by providing a dynamic networked collective public space.
The Arch-OS combines a rich mix of the physical and virtual into a new dynamic architecture. Arch-OS uses embedded technologies to capture audio-visual and raw digital data through a variety of sources that include: the Building Management System (BMS); digital networks; social interactions; ambient noise levels; environmental changes. This vibrant data is then manipulated and replayed through audio-visual projection systems and broadcast through streaming Internet and FM radio.
The Arch-OS project is managed by the Institute of Digital Art and Technology and produced by members of STAR (Science Technology Art Research) and CNAS (Centre for Neural and Adaptive Systems) research groups based in the University of Plymouth, in collaboration with the Architects and Engineers.
Cybroid: Music for buildings
Cybroid is perhaps the first piece of music specially designed to be controlled by the behaviour of a building. The piece is structured in such a way that its generative components are activated by sensors reading information of the building's internal and external activities. The generative engine produces sounds associated with the activities of the various academic units operating in the building, ranging from a virtual choir of singing digital creatures punctuated by the proto-linguistic vocalisations of a variety of monkeys, to chaotic neural-like oscillations and pulsating bio-rhythms.
The piece is inspired by the paradox of the origins of music, as purported by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau described the earliest spoken languages as being composed of vocal inflections such as warnings, cries for help, shouts, etc. In the beginning, these vocal utterances primarily expressed feelings, whilst gestures were preferred to express rational thought. As human society grew in complexity, spoken language needed to become more precise and less passionate. As language followed the path of logical argumentation, those melodic aspects of the primordial utterances evolved into music instead.
Mike Phillips is the director of i-DAT [The Institute of Digital Art and Technology], and deputy director of STAR [Science Technology Arts Research] at the University of Plymouth. Operating collaboratively across the digital domains of pre-WWW global computer-networking and tele/kine/audio-matic performance/installation/object [such as UK EAT88 and Donald Rodney - ICA/TSWA 4 Cities/Psalms Autonomous Wheelchair], Phillips initiated and coordinated the BSc (Hons) MediaLab Arts Programme [1992]. More recently, he founded the On-Line MSc Digital Futures programme and is now overseeing the development of i-DAT. Recent projects include Autoicon (inIVA), STI Project (The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence - SciArt), Artefact (V&A) and the Cybrid architectural operating system.
Eduardo Reck Miranda is currently Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Music in the School of Computing, and a leading research scientist and a composer of international reputation. In 1991, he received an MSc in Music Technology from the University of York and went on to the University of Edinburgh, where in 1994 he obtained his PhD in Music In 1992 he studied computer music at ZKM (Center for Art and Media), in Karlsruhe, Germany and in 1994 he was awarded a research fellowship at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), where he developed Chaosynth, an innovative granular synthesis software that uses evolutionary computing techniques for generating complex sound spectra. In 1998, Dr. Miranda took up a research position at Sony Computer Science Laboratory in France. His compositions have been broadcast and performed at many festivals, winning prizes and distinctions in Brazil, France and Italy. He was appointed Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, in 2000.