Open Source Intelligence 2.0

Photo by Jujje Eriksson

Noisebud’s – ‘Open Source Intelligence’  is an interactive installation and performance commissioned by Audiorama and Luger, originally created for ‘Stockholm Music & Arts festival, 1-3 August 2014.

Open Source Intelligence is our most ambitious project to date. It took a whole summer to realize, it has been a bumpy road. The project involves all of Audiorama’s 21 loudspeakers (mounted in a spherical array), 18 LCD screens, 7 cameras, 1 projector, and 8 computers. As always with installations at this size you’d probably would’ve thought twice if you knew what you got yourself into, we didn’t know. But… everything went according to plan except the production of the custom software that would control all 18 screens. It was no easy task, we wanted face recognition, live feed from hundreds of hacked remote web cameras, glitch effects, pre-recorded videos, recording abilities, and most but not least, the all stand-alone installation mode. The project could’ve been called ‘BSOD’. Thanks to our friend Patrik Ohlsson we got rid of the nastiest bugs just a couple of hours before opening but the software still would stop responding at times. During ‘Stockholm music & Arts’ where we had 2 shows a day plus the installation running at all times, we solved the shaky software by installing PSTools so that we could restart the whole thing remotely since we were in another room while performing. At the third performance, we only had two crashes, we considered that a success. Luckily the restart process was so quick that the audience never realized that the software stopped, but the constant worrying made it pretty tense to perform live. For the upcoming shows Patrik has rewritten the whole program from scratch and everything is stable, we can now put all our attention on the actual performance, the way it’s supposed to be. Open Source Intelligence 2.0…

Open Source Intelligence

we look at
observes
keep watch
trying to obtain an overview
gain perspective
on us and our existence

The boundary between spectator and actor is becoming blurred. The roles have merged into each other, changing places, and taking turns. What I need is a digital medium to travel in and through. My life is not just one, my identity is many. We do not yet know how constant monitoring and mapping affect us but what we do know is that it is one of the greatest revolutions in human history and old rules no longer apply. Knowledge has always been the most vital commodity, but today’s digital consumption has opened the gates for a perhaps less flattering market, where human values are negotiable by everyone, at any time, and in public.

We’re building our information Tesla cage…

The cage is ready and we’re about to mount the 18 monitors…

Sol in full action wiring cables for all the screens…

If you been helping out hanging paintings in a gallery you’ll understand why we took this photo

Software test, after a couple of hours hunting bugs we finally successfully connected to all cameras.

First rehearsal, we got a good feeling about the whole thing

Johannes in performance mode

Live and direct. In our performance area we have two analogue cameras and a video mixer to communicate what we’re doing with the audience.

What we got here is a failure to communicate…

Sol’s favorite instrument, the spider