*glisten) HIVE, generative animation and sound installation, 2010-18
A collaboration with Simon Lysander Overstall

—video is a 03:00 excerpt from “Digital Animalities” exhibition, Toronto, 2018.

*glisten) HIVE is a project that aggregates and visualizes Twitter communications about animals, and generates ambient sound from field recordings of animal vocalizations. The project represents moments of interspecies empathy through text and sound as forms of ecological relating. 

The Tweets selected for the project are mapped into the installation as animated text mimicking social-animal swarming or flocking patterns. The animations are created using Max/MSP software that allow for non-repeating organically moving patterns. The soundscape is produced using field recordings from the artists treated with granular synthesis and generative techniques to create a soundscape of many voices. The project can be customized for specific content. For “Urban Beeing” (2014) Prague the project focused on Tweets about bees, and experimented with recordings of bees for the soundscape. For “Digital Animalities” (2018), the project was themed on birds.

Twitter: @glisten_HIVE

Shown at:

• 2018 Digital Animalities, curated by Matthew Brower and Giovanni Aloi. CONTACT Gallery and the John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto. November 1-30, 2018.
• 2014, Nov 20-Dec 12, “Urban Beeing”, Školská 28, Prague, Czech Republic.
• 2012  the 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition, Beijing, China.
• 2011 CHI2011 User in Flux workshop, Vancouver, May 7-12.
• 2010 CODE Live 2 (Cultural Olympiad’s Digital Edition), Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, Feb 4-21.

Production Team:
Julie Andreyev: tweet collection, visual design
Simon Lysander Overstall: Max/MSP software, sound design
Hyuma Frankowski: installation screen design
Dennis Rosenfeld: networked software support
Derek Ing,  Lindsay Braynen, Sha Li, Sheryl Yang: Research Assistants

Supported by:
CODE Live 2 (Cultural Olympiad’s Digital Edition), Vancouver Cultural Olympiad;
Emily Carr University of Art + Design.