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 Cybersonica & Encompass Sonic Art Exhibition The Vinyl Factory, Poland Street, Soho. In it's 5th year now Cybersonica has become somewhat of an institution for audio visual artists and audiences alike and this years programme was unlikely to disappoint many. If I have a criticism, the conference and performances seemed to have many of the same names and performers of previous years and having seen 'I Am The Mighty Jungulator' several times before, I decided to head down to the Sonic Art Exhibition at The Vinyl Factory, Phonica Records. The exhibition showcased 7 existing works and 5 new pieces specifically commissioned for this years festival and featured an open source 3d game engine from Fijuu, Squidsoup's drawn sound interface, electro kinetic sound installation from Someth;ng, Troika's punchcard inspired midi trigger box and live sound tool Death Before Disco 1.2 by Albert Bleckmann and Bernard Zoesmayr. Selected existing works included Jens Wunderling Loop Arena, EtchASound by Seulki Kang & Kenichi Okada, Pe Lang & Zimoun, untitled Sound Objects, Mind your Head by Phillip Marston, Shadow Monsters by Phillip Worthington, iScratch by Shosei Oishi and Interchange by Wojciech Kosma. With a focus on taking interactivity into the physical space, each of the installations attempt to draw the participant into some form of physical gesture from emitting sound into a microphone, rocking on a chair, or moving your entire body to meld sound and image together. Most of the installations urge the user to make decisions on how their movement will effect the audio visual output and you find yourself noting preferences in compositional changes based upon your hitherto actions.  Squid Soup's Freq2 is most notable in this using web cam technology to capture the movement of the bodies shadow and literally drawing net like waves of sound on a screen. Playback of audio and image is immediate allowing you a dynamic perception of your movement through space. Shadow Monsters by Phillip Worthington trod a similar terrain, only using the bodies movement to create audio visual grotesques. The audio in this piece was less appealing no doubt through design but after using Freq2 the visual aspect didn't feel as dynamic either, although I note it was an existing work from 2005. I think this would probably have greater appeal to kids as there was no limit to the guttural & gurgling audio that accompanied each movement.  Fijuu 2 was one of the two installations that used 3D graphic & sound interfaces allowing users manipulation of the 3D environment through game console controllers. Built entirely on open source software and running on a pre-configured Linex system players can intuitively manipulate 3D forms with audible signal processes. This allows a personal relationship between what is seen and what is heard giving physical form to the audio itself. Given a bank of instruments, sample manipulation and synthesis tools as well as non linear sequencing, this was the closest of all the installations to operate as a truly compositional tool.  Tape by the group Someth;ng was my favourite of the commissioned pieces and stood out for it's architectural qualities as much it's analogue system amongst the plethora of digital sonic art. An electro - kinetic sound installation using a simple analogue playback system, the user vocalises a sound which is recorded onto a quarter inch tape loop and rotated around the assemblage of hand built electro - mechanical parts. The user can then effect the recorded audio by twisting & sliding the various components within the perspex panel in which it is housed. Manipulating the playback heads back & forth allows you to control the speed in which the sound is replayed giving a it a slow motion effect or speeding it up to 'scratch' the audio. A simple principle with a beautiful aesthetic.  Troika's Schizoporotica is a humorous take on the punchcard music box of 18th & 19th centuries and instead requires the random tearing of your ticket and inserting it into the machine / box to create a so called 'Shredded Melody'. Feeding in another before the current is finished creates an interesting overlap of sounds and plays upon our everyday transaction of ticket barriers & ATM cash machines. The emitted sound I found a bit pedestrian and a bit too reminiscent of computer midi files, which is probably what they were. A bit more variation of the audio might have made me play with this piece for longer as the actual concept and aesthetic was really interesting. Of the other existing works 'Mind Your Head' by Phillip Marston is a simple and effective installation in which you rock to & fro on a metal chair under a fluorescent tube light. Wearing headphones, with an EMF (electromagnetic frequency) pick-up attached the resulting electro magnetic static & drones varied depending on the speed of you movement. This physical interaction with such a mundane everyday object seeks to draw on our increasing environmental exposure to man made electromagnetic fields. Jens Wunderling's 'Loop Arena' is a a generative music interface, working like a 16-step sequencer in a constant loop. The touch screen interface has a quite a beautiful graphical presentation but it was slow to react to my choices and I found the generated audio anachronistic and quickly tired of it. Perhaps like so many generative audio pieces, playing with sine waves becomes more about demonstrating a concept than inspiring creative audio interactivity.  The pick of these works for me was EtchASound installation by Seulki Kang & Kenichi Okada. Inspired by the Etch-A-Sketch toy the user creates a 2 dimensional line image in real time with their voice through 4 small microphones which protrude from the box. The interface then converts this growing image into a 3 dimensional drawing and wearing accompanied 3D glasses you are then able to see your drawing in a 3rd dimension space. Volume controls the vertical and the horizontal variables and pitch controls the depth. Drawing with your voice in this way is immediately satisfying and EtchASound has all the playful inventiveness of the original Etch-A-Sketch and dare I say it fun for all the family ! Cybersonica Sonic Art Exhibition was an intriguing showcase of contemporary audio visual art, creatively put together with enthusiastic invigilators ready to take you through all the aspects of the various works. I often have criticisms of the audio content of installation based audio visual art but despite this, all pieces had something to recommend them. It is also great to see work that is breaking out of contained interactivity into physical space. Review by
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