Abstract
In search of both computational and intuitive understandings of the nature of networks, Antonsen and Niemeyer push the boundaries of network visualization and sonification.
At high levels of abstraction, they show how transformations are frictionless and enchanting. Boundaries seem fluid. When networks are more concrete, transformations are also more challenging. How can the fluidity of abstraction help inspire and support new kinds of solutions in concrete situations?
Niemeyer and Antonsen present excerpts of their audiovisual and interactive work, and discuss what creative research can add to cold, hard structures of information technology. Antonsen and Niemeyer worked together on major projects including Network Paradox (Catharine Clark Gallery. 2018) and Quantopia (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2019) with DJ Spooky.
Bios
Greg Niemeyer is Chair and Full Professor of New Media at the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley, California. He started working with new media when he arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1992. He received his MFA from Stanford University in New Media in 1997. At the same time, he founded the Stanford University Digital Art Center. In 2001 he was appointed at UC Berkeley as a Professor for New Media in Art Practice. He co-founded and directed the Center for New Media, focusing on the critical analysis of the impact of new media on human experiences. Greg Niemeyer’s work focuses on mediations between individuals, communities and environments. These mediations rely on data manifestations. Data manifestations are materializations of abstract data in the way people can feel. Sea water levels can become compositions for Carillons. Climate data stored in the Vostok Ice Core can become an audio tour. The myriad ways in which nodes in networks can connect to define emergent ways of life can become a gallery exhibit or a multimedia concert.
Roger Antonsen is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. He is a logician, mathematician, computer scientist, author, public speaker, science communicator, and artist. At the University of Oslo he teaches Logical Methods at the Department of Informatics in the research group Analytical Solutions and Reasoning (ASR). Otherwise he spends time at UC Berkeley, California and ICERM at Brown University, as a Visiting Scholar. He is also engaged in various forms of science communication and outreach. His academic interests are logical calculi, proof theory, mathematical logic, complexity theory, automata, combinatorics, philosophy of mathematics, visualizations, and mathematical art.