Steve Gibson

Steve Gibson is an interactive media artist, interface designer, audio-visual performer and Associate Professor in Innovative Digital Media at Northumbria University, Newcastle. Influenced by a diverse body of art and popular movements his music fuses experimental electronica, techno, krautrock and the avant-garde. He has studied with well-known contemporary composers such as Louis Andriessen and Frederik Rzewski. His experimental electronic collaborative CDs include “SPASM: The Sound of Virtual Reality” and “Hacking the Future”. More recently he has been involved in large-scale multi-screen audio-visual events, including several with Swiss VJ collective Scheinwerfer in Zurich, Vancouver, San Francisco, Chicago, Shanghai and Singapore. He also performs as a body-based performer using motion tracking to control sound, lights, and video by movement in 3D space. Over the course of his 25-year career he has presented at many world-leading venues including Ars Electronica, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Banff Centre for the Arts, Digital Art Weeks, the European Media Arts Festival, ISEA, the National Museum of Scotland and Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich. His co-authored book Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice was published by Routledge in July 2022. He is currently working with Northern Dance in Newcastle on a large-scale movement-based audio-visual project, Ephemera.

ARTWORK

VRITUAL AV: Tactile Micro interface
Live Audio-Visual performance

Continuing the motion-based work of Opto-Phono-Kinesia I have developed VRitual AV. In response to the limitations introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, I utilised a more portable and simpler interface than the room-scale Gesture and Media System motion-tracking system used in the above project.

VRitual AV uses the Leap Motion 3D controller, as well as a multi-touch iPad interface (in TouchOSC) to enable small-area gestural control of sound, visuals and light. It deliberately uses as few technological resources as possible in a limited spatial area, while retaining the complexity of interaction required for an expert (as opposed to a general) interactive performance. The project builds on previous work on multi-modal synesthetic interfaces.

In short, the gestural or touch-based actions have matched audio and light response that are both repeatable and logical (i.e., raised hand to audio volume, video opacity and light dimmer), while at the same time the number of gestural interactions is substantive enough to make the interface complex enough for a genuinely satisfying performance by an expert performer. VRitual AV enables the performer to move his or her hands and draw to perform and mix music, lights and visuals in real-time with precision. The ultimate in tactile audio-visual interfaces!

Artwork Link
https://vimeo.com/showcase/9966326

Website
https://telebody.ws/
https://vimeo.com/room101studio