2018
x3 CG animations on square screens, silent
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Three animations made with raw data from the ATLAS detector at CERN particle physics laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland. Removed from its scientific framework, the data becomes a physical form in its own right, something to explore as an artistic medium. Each animation offers a different perspective of the data, presented on custom made square screens.
Acquired for Audemars Piguet Collection, CERN collection and 2 private collections.
HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3, Broken Symmetries, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, 2021. Photo: Stanislav Stepaško / Kumu Art Museum
HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3, National Center of Contemporary Arts, (CNAC), Santiago, Chile, 2019. Photo: CNAC
HALO 0.3, 2018
HALO 0.2, 2018
HALO 0.3, 2018
HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3, National Center of Contemporary Arts, (CNAC), Santiago, Chile, 2019. Photo: CNAC
Earthworks is a five channel computer generated animation, which creates an immersive experience of the phenomena of landscape formation through the scientific and technological devices that are used to study it. Masses of colourful layers are animated by the sound-scapes of earthquake, volcanic, glacial and human activity, recorded as seismic waves, which form spectacular fluctuating marbled waveforms.
Semiconductor have employed the scientific technique of Analogue Modelling, which uses layers of real world multi-coloured particles and application of pressure and motion to simulate tectonic and seismic forces. As the layers become deformed they reproduce the generation and evolution of landscapes in nature over thousands of years, revealing them to be in a constant state of flux.
Semiconductor have acquired seismic data captured as a result of land shifting and forming, from all over the world. There are four distinct sections to the work, each using a different set of seismic data. This includes; glacial, earthquake, volcano and human-made seismic activity captured at La Planta quarry, Spain, to represent the Anthropocene, a new geological era influenced by humans. The data has been translated to audio to form the soundtrack of the work, and simultaneously control the animation of the layers. The data as sound directly sculpts the image, re-animates the landscape, and reflects the symbiotic relationship between landscape formation and seismic vibrations. The seismic audio is rich and full of the intricacies of the dynamics of our planet in motion.
By using seismic data to control the masses of layers Semiconductor are not only playing with the idea that it is these forces that have shaped landscapes, but also that being an event that occurs beyond a human-time frame, landscape formation can only be experienced through scientific technological mediation of nature. It produces information about time, space and phenomena that no human consciousness could possibly have witnessed. It is as if we are watching hundreds of thousands of years played out in front of our eyes, enabling us to bear witness to events which ordinarily occur on geological time-frames.
By adopting the analogue modelling techniques, the work celebrates the revelatory capacities of modern science and technologies to create a kind of technological sublime, whilst simultaneously inviting viewers to consider the philosophical problems posed by such technologically mediated observations of imperceptible phenomena.
Earthworks is commissioned by SónarPLANTA Produced by Advanced Music
Thanks to: Fundació Sorigué Sónar Festival/Advanced Music Nigel Bax
University of Barcelona:
Dr Albert Casas Ponsati
Raul Lovera Carrasco
Mahjoub Himi Benomar
Dr. Josep Anton Muñoz
Oriol Ferrer
Cai Matthews
Jose Luis de Vicente
Salvador Rey Nagel
Seismic data courtesy of the Iris (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) Consortium
Catching the Light, video documentation, ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014
2014
multi-channel HD moving image with 6 metre wide Alucore screens
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Catching the Light is a moving image installation which explores how science and technology frame our experiences of the natural world.
Created using visual data collected by space telescopes, the six metre wide projection is made up of thousands of images which have been assembled to create time-lapse sequences. By collaging these images of space together, Semiconductor have disrupted their original spatial relationships, to create new patterns and points of reference. They have, in effect, remapped the sky.
By collecting the data in its rawest form Semiconductor are able to present it as the telescope captured it. Ordinarily scientists would remove any noise, anomalies or signatures of the technology associated with the capturing process, but Semiconductor have embraced these artefacts, using them to remind us of how our perception of deep space is framed by the tools and processes of science.
The shape of the screens reflect the space observatories’ image capturing process: as they photograph chosen parts of the sky, the trail of images produce assorted shaped arrays, which are then used as points of reference in the data archives. Semiconductor have combined three of these arrays in their native format to make the screen composition. Used in this way they become portholes or windows into the universe, they also suggest that what we are seeing is only a part of a much larger picture.
The screens are installed away from the wall to create floating objects. The aluminium composite material used to fabricate them is commonly used in the production of scientific objects sent into space; as well as being light weight and strong it typically bears its honeycomb innards revealing its workings. The matt black surface of the screen resonates with how scientists and engineers use the mattest of blacks in the production of space optics to absorb unwanted light.
The four channel sound runs along the width of the screen, shifting as events appear and disappear. Using the luminescence of the image to create and control sound, the visual events carve a sonic space out of a field of noise, producing a singing universe of harmonic tones, reminiscent of radio telescope data translated into audible frequencies.
Semiconductor are interested in how technology, made to study nature, mediates our experiences and understanding of it. Here, by employing the products of science they have created an interpretation of deep space framed by the technology that is made to capture it, leading us to question what we are experiencing.
Catching the Light is commissioned by ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore for Da Vinci: Shaping the Future exhibition, 2014-2015. Data obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) Programmer Julian Weaver
Currently fundraising for production of single channel version. If you’re interested in supporting this please get in in touch.
Catching the Light (detail), ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014
Catching the Light (detail), ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014
Catching the Light (detail), ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014
Catching the Light (detail), ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014
The Shaping Grows by Semiconductor for Swarovski, image David Levene. Installation view at the Design Museum, London, 2012
2012
03.00 minute loop
4 channel HD + 4 channel audio
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
The Shaping Grows is a computer generated animation of a subterranean cavern, brought to life through seismic data. Fantastical mineral crystals chaotically emerge and evolve according to the natural resonance of our shifting planet. These manifestations reveal atomic structures in their rawest form providing a window into the make-up of the physical world, where simple shapes come together to create intricate and complex formations. Here, Semiconductor draw a parallel between these basic molecular structures and the building blocks of the digital world, a world which has become the prism through which we increasingly experience reality.
The animation spans multiple time frames condensing geological events and processes through time-lapse techniques, allowing us to bear witness to mineral crystal growth patterns and the traces they leave behind. Mineral crystals can become consumed by larger formations or play host to wildly different structures, as physical conditions change over time and favour certain elemental and chemical reactions. Matter can also become trapped inside formations as they grow, creating ‘inclusions’. The resulting objects store the memory of their making and can be read to learn the story of their evolution and the conditions in which they grew.
Semiconductor have collected seismic data of recent earthquake activity from around the world and converted it into sound. This directly animates and controls the formations and provides a sound-scape of the Earth in a state of flux.
Commissioned by Swarovski for the exhibition Digital Crystal at the Design Museum, London.
2011
05.00 minutes
HD + HD 3D single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
20 Hz is a moving image work by Semiconductor created using data of the Earth’s magnetic field as a geo-magnetic storm occurs in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz.
The data used was obtained from CARISMA (Canadian Array for Real-time Investigations of Magnetic Activity), a vast magnetometer network, which covers a large region of North America, from the Canadian Arctic down to Michigan. The devices collect the data from the Earth’s magnetosphere, where interactions occur between particles, magnetic fields and the solar wind.Some of the sounds recorded can be attributed to specific interactions occurring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; the tweeting noises are a form of magnetic pulsation generated by various instabilities, the deep rumbles are from the high-speed solar wind flowing over the Earth’s magnetic field boundary and causing ripples to form.
To create 20 Hz Semiconductor developed custom programming and 3-D manipulation techniques to simultaneously realise audio and sculptural forms that are born directly from, and animated by, the data. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex interference patterns emerge, revealing the data as three-dimensional and tangible, like some kind of natural phenomena is playing out before our eyes.
With this work Semiconductor have chosen to reference imagery often employed in scientific visualisations – such as a black & white palette, a shallow depth of field – framing the data by the very tools of knowledge acquisition, drawing attention to a process of observation of natural phenomena itself. With this framing they seek to question how the anthropocentric view of events beyond human reach conditions our everyday experience of the natural world, highlighting the subjective nature of science.
Through this work Semiconductor continue to explore their interest in that which is outside of what is humanly perceivable, confronting the viewer with information which is ordinarily outside of a human scale, both of time and space. Detached from its scientific framework, data becomes a material in its own form, creating a space for reflection upon our relationship to phenomena at the extremities of our perception and positioning the human subject as part of the wider ecosystem of our universe.
Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency. Special thanks to Andy Kale.
Awarded the ‘Golden Gate Award for New Visions’ at San Francisco International Film Festival, 2012.
Awarded the ‘Art and Science Award’ at Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2012. Awarded first prize at Quantum Shorts 2014, Centre for Quantum Technologies, University of Singapore.
Worlds in the Making, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool, UK, 2011. Photo: Brian Slater
2011
23.00 minutes
3 channel HD
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Worlds in the Making is an epic three channel moving image work that explores how we observe, experience and create an understanding of the physical origins of the world around us. By appropriating the tools and processes of volcanology to re-interpret the primordial landscapes of our volcanic planet, Semiconductor create a world slightly removed from the one we think we know, disrupting our every day assumptions of reality and questioning how science affects our experience of the natural world.
In the work the use of audio investigates our relationship with the physical, scientific and ephemeral nature of sound. Seismic data collected from beneath volcanoes and translated into audio evokes images of rocks crunching and grinding below the Earth and is used as a sculptural tool to generate elaborate CG animations of matter forming as mineral crystals. A scientist’s dialogue appears to guide us through extraordinary landscapes while Oren Ambarchi’s composition overwhelms as it brings an emotional connection to place.
The viewer is transported through dystopian landscapes, strangely exquisite animations, fantastical vistas, and natural phenomena to a world between science fiction and science fact.
Commissioned by Jacqui Davies and FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology.Supported by Arts Council England. Gulbenkian Galapagos Artists Fellowship. Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship.
Credits:
Music by Oren Ambarchi – Published by Touch Music (MCPS) Richard S. Fiske – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mineral Sciences Department: for his oratory skills, field notes and methodical tephra sorting. Ellen Thurneau – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mineral Sciences Department. William G. Melson – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mineral Sciences Department: for his audio recordings of Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica erupting. Jonathan M. Lees, Professor of Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. For his seismic data collected at Tungurahua volcano, Ecuador which features in the work.. Gregory P. Waite, Assistant Professor of Geophysics, Michigan Technological University, USA. For his seismic data from Fuego Volcano, Guatemala and Mount St. Helens, Washington, USA. Jorge Ordonez at Instituto Geofisico, Quito Ecuador Adam and Miriam at Instituto Geofisico, Quito Ecuador
Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Dennis Geist, Professor of Geology at the University of Idaho, USA Gorki Ruiz at Instituto Geofisico, Quito Ecuador Instituto Geofisico Volcano Observatory, Tungurahua, Ecuador
Scientific paper: Liquid Sulfur at Volcan Azufre, Galapagos Islands by W.E. Colony and Bert E. Nordle, 1973. Charles Darwin Research Station Library, Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador.
Produced by Jacqui Davies.
preview of Worlds in the Making installation – to watch HD full screen double-click the image
Worlds in the Making, Crystallize, Old Billingsgate, London, 2013
Worlds in the Making, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), solo show, 2011. Photo: Brian Slater
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making, Semiconductor: The Technological Sublime, City Gallery Wellington, solo show, 2019. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making, Semiconductor: The Technological Sublime, City Gallery, Wellington, solo show, 2019. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), solo show, 2011. Photo: Brian Slater
2010
15:00 minutes
HD single + multi-channel versions
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Heliocentric uses time-lapse photography and astronomical tracking to plot the sun’s trajectory across a series of landscapes. The entire environment is seen panning past the camera whilst the sun stays in the centre of each frame, enabling us to gauge the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun. As the Suns light becomes disrupted by passing weather conditions and the environment through which we encounter it, it audibly plays them as if it were a stylus.
It is usually all but impossible to visualize how the earth moves around the sun, even though we know it to be true. Instead we ‘see’ the sun move around us. The ‘heliocentric’ view of the universe was debated from the third century BC onwards and remained contentious into modern times.
Shooting into the sun creates many intriguing artifacts; lens flares and glare spill over the landscape, white outs burn the image, and colours bleed into one, creating aureoles. The power of the sun still exceeds what both the human eye and the artificial eye of the camera can bear. And whilst our knowledge of the universe is ever-growing, we can only encounter and know it from our own humble vantage point.
2007
04:47 minutes
HD single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?
An Animate Projects commission for Channel 4 in association with Arts Council England. Shot at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA.
Many thanks to the following people:
Bill Abbett, David Brain, Bob Lin, Janet Luhmann, Stephen Mende, Forrest Mozer, Ilan Roth and Paul Thompson.
Also big thanks to the CSE team at the Silver Space Sciences Lab. UC Berkeley, USA.
VLF Recordings: Stephen P.McGreevy
Awarded the Nature ‘Scientific Merit Award’ by Imagine Science Film Festival, New York, 2009.
Purchased by the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington for the permanent collection, 2008.
Awarded ‘Best Film at Cutting Edge’ at the British Animation Awards, 2008.
Special Mention, ‘Best International Experimental Short’ at Leeds International Film Festival, 2008. Awarded ‘Best Experimental Film’ at Tirana International Film Festival, 2007.
2006
05:02 minutes
HD single channel + 3 channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Earth Moves is an exploration into how unseen forces affect the fabric of our world. By collecting field recordings and using them to directly animate photographs of the landscapes from which they came, the limits of human perception are exposed, revealing a world which is unstable and in a constant state of animation. As the forces of acoustic waves come into play on our surroundings, we bear witness to vast undulating terrains, which challenge our everyday experiences of the world around us.
The South-East of England is explored through a series of five audio controlled photographic panoramas.
Earth Moves is an Arts Council England commission and is permanently installed at the South East offices, Brighton. Earth Moves was developed from an idea initiated during participation in Greg Daville’s City Running, Brighton March 2006. Three screen version of Earthmoves commissioned by Lovebytes.
2005
02:49
SD single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
For ‘200 Nanowebbers’, Semiconductor have created a molecular web that is generated by Double Adaptor’s live soundtrack. Using custom-made scripting, the melodies and rhythms spawn a nano scale environment that shifts and contorts to the audio resonance. Layers of energetic hand drawn animations, play over the simplest of vector shapes that form atomic scale associations. As the landscape flickers into existence by the light of trapped electron particles, substructures begin to take shape and resemble crystalline substances.
2005
04:40
SD single channel / surround sound
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Presented as a fictional documentary, All the Time in The World sees the millions of years that have shaped and formed the land, played out at the speed of sound.
Semiconductor have reanimated Northumbria ‘s epic landscape using data recordings from the archives at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh . This data of local and distant seismic disturbances has been converted to sound and used to sculpt and bring to life the constantly shifting geography around us.
We follow the motion of the sound as it travels from the coast at Cocklawburn to the hills of The Cheviots, transforming the land. We travel to Abb’s Head and witness Earth Lights, made visible by the seismic sounds. These phenomena are said to be the result of tectonic movement in the strata below us. Flashes of light and electricity are produced as movement squeezes mineral crystals together, displaying luminous objects whose motion coincides with the direction of ruptures within the earth.
Filmed and animated between October and March 2005 during a fellowshipat Berwick Gymnasium Art Gallery, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK. Supported by English Heritage and Arts Council England North East
Sonic Inc. performance, Mutek Festival, Montreal, Canada 2007. Photo: Caroline Hayeur
2004 – 2008
various lengths
live animation software
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Inspired by the challenge to create and manipulate an entire work of sonic animation in real-time, Semiconductor custom-made their own live performance software, Sonic Inc. The performance is a joint effort that sees Semiconductor creating forms and compositions on the fly through a process of drawing and manipulation, whilst the computer ‘listens’ to the audio, realising and animating the digital creations to its resonance.
The visual aesthetic of Sonic Inc. moves away from the high-tech world of computer graphics and towards the inherent visual language of the computer. Slick complexity is stripped back to reveal the basic building blocks of computational visual language. Using this Semiconductor explore artificial expression within the realm of computer animation.
The performance has six chapters of evolution; progressing from elementary forms to burgeoning worlds, and finally simple life forms, which learn to move autonomously, grow and build their own environments.
Every element is created and controlled in real-time; the forms, cameras, the viewpoint, the creation and application of image textures,the creature development, the landscape creation etc.
This is multi-purpose software which can also be used as an improvisational tool, using a direct audio feed with live musicians.
“Things are quite unpredictable with Sonic Inc., there’s a lot of risk taking involved as we make everything from scratch, controlling every element, things get pretty hectic. Unpredictable isn’t a quality you normally associate with a computer, but we have always liked the bringing together of analogue and digital, the human and the machine. We are the element that makes it erratic and are an uneven match for the computer. Performing with Sonic Inc is totally free-form, something which our pre-rendered works are certainly not – they are tight and time consuming.” Semiconductor
Semiconductor would like to thank Julian Weaver for his skills and patience, Niels Gorisse for CPS http://www.bonneville.nl/cps
and Andrew Duff for his midi-magic.
Supported by Arts Council England.
Performances using Sonic Inc:
Sightsonic Festival, York, UK – Early 2008
Mutek Festival, Montreal, Canada Semiconductor solo performance and collaboration with Hauschka 2007
Aurora, Norwich Animation Festival- 9th November 2007
Lab30 Festival, Augsberg, Germany – 27th October – 2007
Almost Cinema, Vooruit, Ghen, 9th October 2007
Outsider Festival, La Maison Europeene de La Photography, Paris- 28/29 Sept. 2007
Volksbhune, Berlin, Germany – 23rd Sept. 2007
c/o Pop Festival, Cologne, Germany – 16th August 2007
Montevideo, Amsterdam- 4th July 2007
La Rochelle Film Festival, France – 7th July 2007
Sonic Arts Expo, Plymouth, UK- 23 June 2007
FutureSonic, Manchester, UK- 10/12 May 2007
Nemo Festival, Paris – 25 April 2007
Socetas Raffaello Sanzio,Cesena, Italy – 24/25th March 2007
A:Event, Melkveg, Amsterdam – 11th March 2007
Optronica, SouthBank BFI IMAX, London – 15th March 2007
The Cube, Bristol – collaboration with Antenna Farm – 9th March 2007
Short Circuit, Hasselt Belgium – collaboration with Antenna Farm – January 2007
Consortorium Gallery, Amsterdam – December 2006
Music Research Centre, York University, UK – Ocotber 2006
Bios, Athens, Greece – September 2006
San Francisco Electronic Music Festival at RML – August 2006 21 Grand, Oakland, USA -January 2006
UC Davis, USA – November 2005
Other Cinema, San Francisco, USA – November 2005
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, USA – September 2005
Late at the Tate, Tate Britain, London – June 2005
Sintesi Festival of Electronic Art: Naples – April 2005
Festival Nemo: Paris, France – April 2005
Images Festival, Torronto, Canada – April 2005
Beaconsfield, London – April 2005
Side Cinema, Newcastle – March 2005
Transmediale, Berlin – February 2005
Computer Cinema festival, Rotterdam – November 2004
Cimatics, Brussels – October 2004
Sonic Inc. performance, Mutek Festival, Montreal, Canada 2007. Photo: Caroline Hayeur
2002
various lengths
live animation software
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
A live performance where Semiconductor control and animate creatures, cameras and landscapes in real time. The environment is an architectural stage for the creatures to explore. This is an early version of what would later become Sonic Inc.
