The past weekend we spent with a group of students and their professors Ines Krasić, Mirjana Vodopija and Iva Ćurić from the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb in the idyllic village of Plemenitaš where they have one week of lectures and workshops on the topic of SOUND from different experts ranging from mathematicians and physicists to composers, musicians and artists. We are situated in the middle of this field of experts and presented our work and Empathy Swarm in the relaxed atmosphere of an outdoor evening lecture and a workshop “Machines in the Landscape of Plemenitaš” with one of our Psychophysics Machines: Megatautophone.

In a first step we sent the students out to record the sounds that express how they experience Plemenitaš, capturing the sounds of the scenery, ranging from cicadas, birds, bells of sheep to the rustling leaves in the wind. Then they could listen to their recordings through the directional speaker and learn how to modify the sound to improve it for the special nature of the directional speaker, applying high-pass and low-pass filters to get into the correct frequency range. To capture the results of the workshop and as a prototype for a series of “Machines in the Landscape”, we put the Megatautophone into the landscape, giving it the transformed sounds of the landscape as a language to communicate with its surroundings. We shot videos from different positions and used Zoom X/Y microphones next to the cameras to record this ‘dialog’ of the machine with the landscape. The videos and sounds need still to be combined and cut. We will present it soon!

You can get an impression of the overall Plemenitaš workshops in the article  ” “Zvučni radovi” proizašli iz matematike i fizike” by Marinko Krmpotić.

We had a great time in Plemenitaš! Thanks to all organizers and our host Vesna Osojnički!