Tallieu Art Office

Organism + Excitable Chaos at Ars Electronica

POSTCITY, Bunker
Linz (AT)

Navid Navab is recognized as a media-alchemist and anti-disciplinary composer with a background in biomedical sonification. Navab’s work illuminates the intersection of investigative arts, media archeology, and philosophical biology and is characterized by sculpturous engagement with transductive structures of liveliness. His recent creations orchestrate sensory attunement to the dissipative formations and uncanny forms of order that flow from machinic engagement with excitable dynamics of matter.

A robotically prepared pipe organ driven by a robotically-steered chaotic pendulum
Navid Navab (IR/CA) in collaboration with Garnet Willis (CA)

This work probes the form-giving tendencies of nature by drawing kinetic chaos into conversation with sonic turbulence. The chaotic motion of Excitable Chaos, a robotically-steered triple pendulum, drives the aerodynamic thresholds of Organism, a robotically-prepared century-old pipe organ.

Organism dismantles the socio-historical tonality of the organ to sound its turbulent materiality, liberating long-repressed timbres to be heard anew. Excitable Chaos produces chaotic patterns by modulating the mass/orbital relations between its 3 moving arms. As a physical system with nonlinear behavior it highlights how, in nature, even events at the smallest scales of magnitude compel emergent behaviors whose next states are unknown.

Solo concert with a century-old pipe organ prepared robotically to sound turbulent patterning

In this solo performance centered around a robotically-prepared pipe organ, Navab improvises with Organism to explore ways in which its turbulent thresholds manifest unstable timbres.

A Casavant pipe organ built in 1910 is rescued from the indifference of gentrification at a heritage site in Montreal and brought back to life. Organism destabilizes the socio-historical tonality of the pipe organ to liberate its turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression.

During the concert, shifting metastable states allow for energetic thresholds to rapidly fall into and out of compatibility with one another. With no digital sounds, Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.

Navid Navab
Concert Organism: In Turbulence
5 September 2024
17:00 – 17:35
Ticket registration

HOPE: A touch of many
Theme exhibition Ars Electronica
Organism + Excitable Chaos
4 - 8 September 2024
POSTCITY, Bunker, Linz (AT)
Tickets

Organism & Excitable Chaos at Biennale ELEKTRA - Illusion

Arsenal Contemporary Art
Montréal, Quebec (CA)

Organism and Excitable Chaos by Navid Navab in collaboration with Garnet Willis

The exhibit probes into nature’s form-giving tendencies by putting kinetic chaos in conversation with sonic turbulence. Organism is an investigative platform for stochastic co-patterning via the sono-ecological indeterminacy of turbulent processes of formation. It dismantles the far-too-clean tones of the pipe organ in order to excite its turbulent materiality, unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression. 

Excitable Chaos co-directs chaotic patterns by modulating the transductive resonances of a triple pendulum, a physical system with nonlinear behaviour due to the rapid exchange of potential and kinetic energy among its moving elements. It highlights one of the more spectacular ways in which nature demonstrates how even the smallest scales of magnitude are key contributors to an overall behavior whose next state is rendered unknown. Excitable Chaos's generative movement is sensed and mapped to drive the turbulent sonic thresholds of Organism. 

Navid Navab
Biennale Elektra

Organism at Mois Multi

Mois Multi
Québec (CA)

ORGANISM
In collaboration with Garnet Willis

Centered around a robotically prepared century-old pipe organ, Organism is an investigative platform for stochastic co-patterning via the sono-ecological indeterminacy of turbulent processes of formation.

A Casavant pipe organ built in 1910 is brought back to life after being removed from the indifference of gentrification at a heritage site in Sud-Ouest, Montreal. Organism dismantles the far-too-clean tones of the pipe organ—that reductive triumph of Western civilization over the turbulence of nature—in order to excite the natural turbulent materiality hidden within the heart of its sound-generating process.

The rescued pipes, along with their pneumatic architecture, have been carefully modified to remove stabilizations which historically aimed to eliminate turbulent flow and its uncontrolled sound world, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression.

Mois Multi
Navid Navab