Dr. Nigel L W Helyer

GeneMusiK is an artistic project that puts into play ideas about the capacity of physical morphologies to act as mnemonic systems by using DNA to transcode and remix musical structures. The project suggests that both biological and cultural information can function as both macro- and micro-scale structures arrayed at physical loci to create topologies which function as keys to the mapping of memory.

GeneMusiK is an artistic project that puts into play ideas about the capacity of physical morphologies to act as mnemonic systems by using DNA to transcode and re-mix musical structures. The project suggests that both biological and cultural information can function as both macro and the micro scale structures arrayed as physical loci and topologies that function as keys to the mapping of memory. The author’s attraction to this ongoing series of sound-works that combine human and biological agency to re-invent musical scores is directly proportional to the difficulty of the undertaking with its unpredictable outcomes and high failure rate. As a generative method the outcome is surrendered to the stochastic process of biological transformation, a strategy that substantially erodes the human agency and control invested in authorship. Ultimately the work is returned to the human sphere in the form of live musical performance that carries with it the additional complications of nuanced ...

Under the Ice Cap, Video representation of data visualisation and musical performance from southern elephant seal CTD data score. Lynchpin project mentor, Lisa Roberts of Living Data, and Lynchpin Patron, Nigel Helyer, the wonderful Dr Sonique, along with artist Christine McMillan and others, feature in this important exhibition during the Ultimo Science Festival at The Muse, Ultimo TAFE, 16 – 26 August . These artists have been working with climate change scientists, exploring creative articulation of their research work. Data and modelling have been innovatively reinterpreted through artworks, offering imaginative ways to engage with climate change science.

Vox on the Rox is the first of a series of experimental sonic works to come out of an Art + Science collaboration between Dr. Nigel Helyer of SonicObjects; SonicArchitecture, Dr. Mary Anne Lea of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, and musicians at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music,

This article describes the website Culturescape: An Environmental Portrait of Bundanon. This online portrait, a collaboration combining environmental science and art, includes an interactive environmental map of the Bundanon region in New South Wales, Australia, and documentation of environmental artworks by Nigel Helyer, all initially installed at Bundanon. The interactive map displays soil quality data at Bundanon in sonified and visualized form. The user hears a sonification of environmental data, represented as a musical piece, and sees a visualization of mineral data as a graphic display.

This article takes the form of a dialogue between artist Nigel Helyer and writer and theorist John Potts. The themes considered are the concept of the experimental in art and science, the relationship between the arts and science, and the significance of the environment to both scientific research and creative practice. Within this general context, reference is made to recent art works by Dr Helyer.9 page(s

s from the 2018 Spectra Symposium Part 6 685 topic: systems CuratIng EntanglEmEnt: sCaFFolDIng auDIEnCE EngagEmEnt In art-sCIEnCE ExhIbItIons Katie Dyer and Lizzie Muller In this paper we examine experimental curatorial and interpretive strategies used to engage audiences in art-science exhibitions. We focus on two recent art-science exhibitions concerned with human futures and the impact of technological change: Human+ The Future of Our Species, a touring exhibition generated by the Science Gallery, Dublin, and then developed by the Centre for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona, and the ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2011–2017); and our own exhibition Human non Human, on view at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney (2018–2019). We describe how a relatively new psychosocial method for audience evaluation called the Visual Matrix has helped us to generate insights into the audience experience of these exhibitions through a process of collective free association and how this method can inform the curatorial process. Human+ and Human non Human aimed to engage audiences in the complex and rapidly changing discourse of the “posthuman.” We examine the role of spectacle, provocation, immersion and world-building in these exhibitions. Against this backdrop we focus on our own iterative approach to curating using the Visual Matrix as a formative tool. We show how we responded to a range of audience experiences of Human+ captured by the Visual Matrix in our curatorial approach to Human non Human. In particular we discuss our attempt to scaffold the audience’s experience of Human non Human with an experimental piece of museum interpretation called the “Entanglement Interactive.” This interactive combination of text, images, videos and audio—available in the exhibition space and online—not only maps the interplay of ideas and objects in the exhibition but also emulates the collective associative work that audiences do in exhibitions, which is revealed in the Visual Matrix. The Entanglement Interactive included user analytics that allowed us to track the pathways audiences created between the resources it presented. In this way both the Visual Matrix and the Entanglement Interactive offer tools to capture the connections and associations audiences make between objects and ideas and so give insights into the processes by which collective experience is formed and new knowledge created in exhibitions. Katie Dyer, Senior Curator Contemporary, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse Museum), 500 Harris St, Ultimo, Sydney, 2007, NSW. Email: katie.dyer@maas.museum. Lizzie Muller, Art & Design, University of New South Wales, Paddington Campus, Corner Oxford Street & Greens Road, Paddington, NSW 2021, Australia. Email: lizzie.muller@unsw.edu.au.

This paper explores different approaches to the sonification and visualisation of two environmental projects:-"Heavy Metal" is focussed upon the real-time analysis and sonifica-tion of the chemical elements in a painting via a camera vision system, whilst "Oratorio for a Million Souls" concerns the behaviour and acoustic properties of live bee colonies manifest in the creation of real-time multi-channel sound compositions and associated sound architectures. Whilst these two projects differ in terms of methodology, aesthetics and technical approach they both share a direct concern with a deep analysis of the underlying environmental structures and perceptual frameworks that emerge in direct 'live' encounters-on one hand the discovery of what lies behind the surface of a painted image in terms of chemical and colour structures-and in the case of Oratorio, a compelling immersion into the acoustic environment of Bees.

What is it to know a place, and how is it that we know? Do we slowly accumulate intimate details gathered during repeated visits to a familiar terrain, or are we perhaps transfixed and transformed by an encounter with a solitary natural phenomenon? As with most complex questions, the answer is almost certainly the interplay between approaches— resulting in the formation of a third way that hybridises the familiar with the exceptional. Do we analyse the landscape, or experience it, perhaps through walking? Does our knowledge of the place’s history colour our experience of that place in the present? Do we study the environment, including its history, or do we live inside that environment? Does imagination shape our perception of place? Can we appreciate a place through artworks created there, including paintings of the landscape? The place in question is Bundanon, in the Shoalhaven River Valley, NSW: a vast property of 1100 hectares overseen by the Bundanon Trust since 1993. We have contributed to the Trust’s annual Siteworks festival as a means of manifesting our reflections upon and relationships to the landscape. We hope to act not as distant and impartial observers but situated within the terrain, moving through it and working with it. There are many paths to Bundanon, and we take them all in the process of making this book. We consider the history of Bundanon— its natural and cultural history—describing the many factors that have shaped the environment of this place. We conduct a scientific analysis of the soil in the Shoalhaven River Valley, analysing this environmental data to reveal the impact of decades of human habitation. We use the same technique of environmental science to examine the paint used in an unfinished Arthur Boyd painting, on display in the Artist’s Studio at Bundanon. We survey the terrain of Bundanon with drone footage, tracing the Shoalhaven River and paths across the property. We walk across some of those paths, describing the landscape and some of its history. We glean differing perspectives on Bundanon through its depiction in the landscape paintings of Arthur Boyd, and through a series of artworks by Nigel Helyer, all initially exhibited at Bundanon.

This paper explores different approaches to the sonification and visualisation of two environmental projects:-"Heavy Metal" is focussed upon the real-time analysis and sonifica-tion of the chemical elements in a painting via a camera vision system, whilst "Oratorio for a Million Souls" concerns the behaviour and acoustic properties of live bee colonies manifest in the creation of real-time multi-channel sound compositions and associated sound architectures. Whilst these two projects differ in terms of methodology, aesthetics and technical approach they both share a direct concern with a deep analysis of the underlying environmental structures and perceptual frameworks that emerge in direct 'live' encounters-on one hand the discovery of what lies behind the surface of a painted image in terms of chemical and colour structures-and in the case of Oratorio, a compelling immersion into the acoustic environment of Bees.

This paper explores different approaches to the sonification and visualisation of two environmental projects:-”Heavy Metal” is focussed upon the real-time analysis and sonification of the chemical elements in a painting via a camera vision system, whilst “Oratorio for a Million Souls” concerns the behaviour and acoustic properties of live bee colonies manifest in the creation of real-time multi-channel sound compositions and associated sound architectures.Whilst these two projects differ in terms of methodology, aesthetics and technical approach they both share a direct concern with a deep analysis of the underlying environmental structures and perceptual frameworks that emerge in direct ‘live’ encounters - one one hand the discover of what lies behind the surface of a painted image in terms of chemical and colour structures - and in the case of Oratorio, a compelling immersion into the acoustic environment of Bees.

Inventors: Dr Nigel Helyer A system for providing a listener with an augmented audio reality in a geographical environment said system comprising a position locating system for determining a current position and orientation of a listener in said geographical environment; an audio track creation system for creating an audio track having a predetermined spatialization component dependent on an apparent location of an apparent source associated with said audio track in said geographical environment; an audio track rendering system adapted to render an audio signal based on said audio track to a series of speakers surrounding said listener such that said listener experiences an apparent preservation of said spatialization component; and an audio track playback system interconnected to said position locating system and said audio track creation system and adapted to forward a predetermined audio track to said audio rendering system for rendering depending on said current position and ori...

Prometheus Bound will attempt to examine the relationship between the creative arts and more conventional concepts of research and development held within industry and academia. The approach will be from a contemporary position, but informed by a historical perspective. What is interesting is the close historical relationship of 'creativity' with research and development. The current attempts to once again meld these together seem to reiterate the many historical instances of scientific endeavour manifesting itself as exhibition and (frankly) showmanship. Edison, Tesla, Franklin and Grey were all electrical experimenters prone to spectacular public demonstrations and performances. These researchers inhabited a world in which the boundaries between the arts and the sciences were less defined. Casting even further back in time, the work of anatomy was far more an artistic imperative than a medical or scientific concern until the seventeenth century. This essay will attempt to ...

An authoring system for assigning geo-spatial position to sensory-effect data is disclosed. The sensory-effect data can include one or more of the group of alpha numeric data, image data, sound data, smell data, temperature data, humidity data, wind data, pressure date and light data. The alphanumeric data may comprise computer readable code for, in use, instructing the system to control presentation of the sound, image, smell, humidity, wind, pressure, or light data to an exposee. The authoring system may comprise a user interface on which the geo-space is represented, the interface being arranged in a manner such as to enable, in use, a user to assign the geo-spatial position to the data by placing and manipulating markers on the interface. The authoring system preferably comprises means for defining relationships between markers.

memory and amnesia. "Your words are preserved in the tin foil and will come back upon the application of the instrument years after you are dead in exactly the same tone of voice you spoke in then…..This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, dumb, voiceless matter, nevertheless mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, speaks with your words, and centuries after you have crumbled into dust will repeat again and again, to a generation that could never know you, every idle thought, every fond fancy, every vain word that you chose to whisper against this thin iron diaphragm". 1 Edison's Ars Memoria concept for the phonograph. Introduction. Broadcast media, recording and communications technologies have developed at an alarming pace since Edison proposed the phonograph as an Acoustic Ars Memoria. A series of rapid iterations have overlaid and overwritten previous systems and modus operandi making it easy to forget the central role that radio has pla...

'Our species makes a lot of noise ~ we have created a world in which silence is a rare commodity. The BioPod invites you to spend an overnight acoustic vigil where you can maintain your silence and listen to the voices of other species. During your overnight stay you are invited to make a series of short audio recordings of the soundscape and to also record a personal audio-log reflecting on your experience.' - From the BioPod Survival Manual The BioPods project was developed for the Bundanon Trust annual Siteworks 2014 festival and is also the debut of When Science Meets Art, a three year Australian Research Council project conducted between the artists, and cultural and environmental researchers at Macquarie University. The BioPod is a capsule for an overnight acoustic vigil. Positioned floating on the lake in the sonically significant site on the Bundanon property, the BioPod provides a unique situation that combines sculptural, architectural and acoustic experiences. Par...

Nomanslanding is a major public artwork that tells the stories of our waterways. It was conceived by five international artists working with collaborating curators from across Europe and Australia. The curators asked the question: how do we create site responsive work that is both grounded in place and able to tour? How can it speak of urban connection to waterways and historical connection and resonance with the Great War. NoMansLanding is a poetic reminder of the isolation, uncertainty - and occasionally the fleeting unity - experienced by soldiers on both sides of the War. Urban intervention artworks are most potent when they ‘fit’ into their specific site and context, but this makes them difficult to move. The curators wanted to align the potential settings for an artwork with specific themes and development methodology, prior to commissioning the work. They proposed a new model for collaborative gestation and for the presentation of site responsive work internationally. The res...

This article takes the form of a dialogue between artist Nigel Helyer and writer and theorist John Potts. The themes considered are the concept of the experimental in art and science, the relationship between the arts and science, and the significance of the environment to both scientific research and creative practice. Within this general context, reference is made to recent art works by Dr Helyer.

My French raincoat (a membrane of sorts) bears the legend Impermeable, I can assure you it is not, like most membranes worth their salt it is semipermeable! We are defined, structured and bounded by membranes, selective barriers that function at a molecular level within our bodies and operate at the macro scale as socio-political boundaries. Membranes are selectively permeable structures, controlling the exchange of ions in our synapses, transforming photons into carbohydrates in plants, the meniscus of the world ocean, trading gasses with the atmosphere and regulating our climate. Manifest as an architecture of power the membrane is the portcullis and drawbridge regulating access to a Norman Castle. A filter of economic privilege to the VIP lounge and the algorithm that structures the flow of surveillance information at airport security. Supereste ut Pugnatis (Pugnatis) ut Supereste, photo Ian Hobbs. It is the tissue of language describing the legal pressure valve that transported ...

Introduction ~ My residency at PSI was for five months divided into two sessions, a five week orientation and familiarisation period, followed by a four month concept development, and prototype production period. These two visits to PSI were separated by a two-month interlude in which I undertook projects in Scandinavia and Australia.

Somewhere deep in the primitive reptilian part of our brain stem we hold mnemonic traces of our original Mezozoic environment -3 the vast swampy island continent surrounded by a warm global sea, long before the single landmass broke up into separate continents. Somewhere between then and now……. An Atlas and Rutter. 1. Saltmarsh ~ 2. River ~ 3. Archipelago ~ 4. Island ~ 5. Lake ~ 6. Ice shelf ~ 7. Inundation ~ Saltmarsh ~ Toll My point of departure is a compact of folk-tales told about one of the Sussex villages 4 where I spent much of my childhood. The narrative con-cerns a virtual bell which has become emblematic for me -in as much as I consider all sound to be simultaneously and simultaneously a phenomena and a sign. The helmsman sweeps the steering oar across the ship's stern. The bow describes a slow arc bringing the village squarely into the wooden gaze of the dragon's head. The hull glides between the dwarf oaks that line the salt marsh and the crew trim the sail for l...

What is it to know a place, and how is it that we know? Do we slowly
accumulate intimate details gathered during repeated visits to a familiar
terrain, or are we perhaps transfixed and transformed by an encounter
with a solitary natural phenomenon? As with most complex questions,
the answer is almost certainly the interplay between approaches—
resulting in the formation of a third way that hybridises the familiar
with the exceptional.
Do we analyse the landscape, or experience it, perhaps through
walking? Does our knowledge of the place’s history colour our experience
of that place in the present? Do we study the environment, including its
history, or do we live inside that environment? Does imagination shape
our perception of place? Can we appreciate a place through artworks
created there, including paintings of the landscape?
The place in question is Bundanon, in the Shoalhaven River Valley,
NSW: a vast property of 1100 hectares overseen by the Bundanon
Trust since 1993. We have contributed to the Trust’s annual Siteworks
festival as a means of manifesting our reflections upon and relationships
to the landscape. We hope to act not as distant and impartial observers
but situated within the terrain, moving through it and working with it.
There are many paths to Bundanon, and we take them all in the
process of making this book. We consider the history of Bundanon—
its natural and cultural history—describing the many factors that have
shaped the environment of this place. We conduct a scientific analysis
of the soil in the Shoalhaven River Valley, analysing this environmental
data to reveal the impact of decades of human habitation. We use the
same technique of environmental science to examine the paint used
in an unfinished Arthur Boyd painting, on display in the Artist’s Studio
at Bundanon. We survey the terrain of Bundanon with drone footage,
tracing the Shoalhaven River and paths across the property. We walk
across some of those paths, describing the landscape and some of its
history. We glean differing perspectives on Bundanon through its depiction
in the landscape paintings of Arthur Boyd, and through a series of
artworks by Nigel Helyer, all initially exhibited at Bundanon.

"Freeze Frame" is a creative writing project that imagines a world in which cinema and the afterlife are inextricably linked. The world's last remaining cinema is attended by a group of curious youths and run by environmental refugees, who closely resemble unemployed Greek Deities.

GeneMusiK is an artistic project that puts into play ideas about the capacity of physical morphologies to act as mnemonic systems by using DNA to transcode and re-mix musical structures. The project suggests that both biological and cultural information can function as both macro and the micro scale structures arrayed as physical loci and topologies which function as keys to the mapping of memory.

The author’s attraction to this on-going series of sound-works which combine human and biological agency to re-invent musical scores, is directly proportional to the difficulty of the undertaking with its unpredictable outcomes and high failure rate. As a generative method the outcome is surrendered to the stochastic process of biological transformation, a strategy which substantially erodes the human agency and control invested in authorship. Ultimately the work is returned to the human sphere in the form of live musical performance which carries with it the additional complications of nuanced interpretation and virtuosity, all of which combine to create a fluid matrix of cultural, social and biological exchange that act to flesh-out life-forms (as forms of life) across temporal and spatial barriers.

The on-going GeneMusiK project is related to associated works such as Under the IceCap and the Quartor pour la fin du temps à l’Escargot, which again rely upon biological agents that operate within a broad combinatory framework of cultural, social and biological pathways. These works share overlapping creative methodologies, but each has been developed in varied geographic, biological and cultural contexts. Each work relies upon a co-creative relationship with living organisms to generate the basis for musical structures, for example; the collection of deep ocean data by southern elephant seals in Under the IceCap; and the related vignette piece of data re-interpretation, BioLogging Retrofit. Other works function to create structural modifications of existing musical scores as in the gradual erosion by Gastropods of a well known work by Messiaen to create the Quartor pour la fin du temps à l’Escargot.

GeneMusiK is an artistic project that puts into play ideas about the capacity of physical morphologies to act as mnemonic systems by using DNA to transcode and re-mix musical structures. The project suggests that both biological and cultural information can function as both macro and the micro scale structures arrayed as physical loci and topologies which function as keys to the mapping of memory.

The author’s attraction to this on-going series of sound-works which combine human and biological agency to re-invent musical scores, is directly proportional to the difficulty of the undertaking with its unpredictable outcomes and high failure rate. As a generative method the outcome is surrendered to the stochastic process of biological transformation, a strategy which substantially erodes the human agency and control invested in authorship. Ultimately the work is returned to the human sphere in the form of live musical performance which carries with it the additional complications of nuanced interpretation and virtuosity, all of which combine to create a fluid matrix of cultural, social and biological exchange that act to flesh-out life-forms (as forms of life) across temporal and spatial barriers.

The on-going GeneMusiK project is related to associated works such as Under the IceCap and the Quartor pour la fin du temps à l’Escargot, which again rely upon biological agents that operate within a broad combinatory framework of cultural, social and biological pathways. These works share overlapping creative methodologies, but each has been developed in varied geographic, biological and cultural contexts. Each work relies upon a co-creative relationship with living organisms to generate the basis for musical structures, for example; the collection of deep ocean data by southern elephant seals in Under the IceCap; and the related vignette piece of data re-interpretation, BioLogging Retrofit. Other works function to create structural modifications of existing musical scores as in the gradual erosion by Gastropods of a well known work by Messiaen to create the Quartor pour la fin du temps à l’Escargot.