Four Letter Words consists of four units, each capable of displaying all 26 letters of the alphabet with an arrangement of fluorescent lights.

The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence, derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.

The algorithm’s tendency towards scatological or “dark” subject matter is influenced by a variety of language and perception studies, especially Elliot McGinnies’ 1949 study “Emotionality and Perceptual Defense.”

While the piece was conceived with idea of displaying algorithmically generated lists, it was designed with flexibility and expandability in mind. The individual units can be connected ad-infinitum, and are theoretically capable of displaying any length of text. While Four Letter Words deals with a specific range of content, the technology can be easily expanded for future textual experiments.

I’m Not An Artist is a work in progress project commissioned by Elisava School of Design with concept, creative direction and design by Soon in Tokyo, a communications agency made up of former Elisava students and teachers.

It started with 56 animated gifs directed by Johnny Kelly and Matthew Cooper and aims to grow and to be a platform with the participation of young designers and creatives from all over the world.

The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) by Rashaad Newson,  is the first of a six part video installation. The 3:55 min. digital video loop is made up of footage from various hip-hop videos. All the footage is digitally enhanced and re-edited to track the motion of the hands of the artists. The audio is a composite of sounds consistently heard in artist deemed Hip Hop music greats from a survey conducted with local New York radio stations Hot 97 and 105.1 These sounds are then weaved in and out of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”. The seeming fluidity of the image belies the painstaking nature of the production process: over 5000 individual video frames have been enlarged and repositioned to create the moving image.

StokkeAustad’s Dayboard Calendar started as a research project looking at how different people visualise the year. The starting point was that time is a very subjective entity and we felt traditional calendars did not leave enough room for personal interpretation of how time passes. This calendar allows the user to arrange the year as one sees fit. Are the days ordered in a strict chronological fashion or does it appear more like a blur? Does winter feel longer that summer and so on. The individual dates are held in place by magnets, so each day can be moved around. The different days can also be used to hold in place theatre tickets or reminders.

Sonar is a digital 2D animation by Renaud Hallée. The musical loop is generated by shapes with cyclic behaviors. The animation was selected for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2010.

Zeitguised made a piece in six acts for the opening exhibition at the Zirkel Gallery. It entails six imaginations of disoriented systems that take a catastrophic turn, including the evolution of educational plant-body-machine models and liquid building materials.

scoreLight is an electronic musical instrument designed by Alvaro Cassinelli, Daito Manabe, Yusaku Kuribara and Alexis Zerroug. The prototype generates sounds in real time from the lines of drawings and the contours of 3D objects nearby. A modified laser scanner works like the pick-up head that searches for sounds over the surface of a vinyl record. The difference is that the groove is generated by the contours of the drawing itself. The result is a light beam that dances on the surface of the drawing, while singing its secret score.

Piano-playing Merton freestyles in real-time with random strangers on Chat Roulette. He improvises his songs based on his chat buddy.

The Fragmented Orchestra, conceived by artist Jane Grant, physicist, musician and composer John Matthias and composer Nick Ryan, is a huge distributed musical structure modelled on the firing of the human brain’s neurons. The Fragmented Orchestra connects 24 public sites across the UK to form a tiny networked cortex, which will adapt, evolve and trigger site-specific sounds via FACT in Liverpool.

Each of the sites has a soundbox installed, which will stream human-made and elemental sounds from the site via an artificial neuron to one of 24 speakers in FACT. The sound will only be transmitted when the neuron fires. A firing event will cause fragments of sound to be relayed to the gallery and will also be communicated to the cortex as a whole. The combined sound of the 24 speakers at the gallery will be continuously transmitted back to the sites and to each of the 24 sites.

The sounds of The Fragmented Orchestra will vary according to location; wind over Black Fell, inner city traffic, chanting from sports stadia and the chatter of migrating birds arriving for the winter will be combined with incidental and performed sounds from members of the public. The public, invited to play the instrument at the 24 sites, will be able to hear the effect their playing has on the overall composition of the piece at each site and at FACT. As members of the public use the instrument they will become both player and audience of a vast and evolving musical composition extended across the UK.

The Hello Project is an online social collaboration giving people the chance to say hi, hello, or hola on one of today’s most common yet neglected canvases: the Post-it®.

How it works is simple. Take a regular 3×3 Post-it® and write/sketch/doodle your version of hello. Scan it, email it to hi@thehelloproject.com, and then they’ll post it for everyone to see.