Max Chung creates sonic and visualization experiences that explore responsive technologies in AI and body tracking software. In his multi-media installation, metroequilibrium, Chung creates a digital instrument that captures the relationship of sound and gesture that defines an immersive embodied experience. This installation uses cameras and Google MediaPipe to create an audiovisual experience that highlight an overwhelming and frenetic encounter.
LOCATION: Elements! in Art and Tech exhibition
Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building 10a, Nolan Park Governors Island
Artist Opening Saturday August 31, 2024 from 2 – 4:30 pm. Performance by Luc Vitkova at 2:45 pm.
All events are free.
Open to the public from 11 am to 5 pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and by appointment. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE WILL NOT BE OPEN ON FRIDAYS IN OCTOBER.
Max Chung’s multimedia installation explores the unfamiliar struggles of navigating a post-pandemic world with its volatile shifts in experiences. metroequilibrium uses cameras for Google’s MediaPipe AI to track body motion and gestures, and translates them into sound and visualization in real-time. The tracking system is programmed to require faster body movements in order to maintain an unbroken reflection of the performer on the screen. The sound parameters also change with both the position and speed of the gesture, becoming more intense with more agitated movements. The system uses several MAX/MSP guided instruments, each of which are activated by different gestures. The boundary between performer and gallery participant blurs as the instrument demands an active response.
metroequilibrium creates contrasting experiences from intense, urban sounds and sharp imagery to calming, human-based recordings. The still moments that capture sounds of respiration and vocalization create a reprieve within an architecture of chaos and disorientation. The responsive light projections use Jitter to dissolve the image of the performer which represents the constant din of the everyday urban experience. Upon entering the gallery, the screen is an abstract array of lines and color with an industrial and discordant soundscape. As the viewer begins to engage in real time with the installation, the outline of the performer’s body appears with sounds of peaceful breathing and speaking. As the viewers activate the instrument, colorful lines define the contours of the face, hands, and body. The choreographic gestures form a live, improvisatory performance with each unique engagement and reflects the unstable forces that have shaped our post-pandemic world, offering moments of recovery within this visual soundscape.
• BIOS
Max Chung is a contemporary multi-media sound artist and composer in New York City who blurs the boundaries between EDM, interactive responsive visual technologies and acoustical instrumentation. His recent work has been focused on our shifting perceptions of time that affect our relationship between emotion and temporal illusions. His work explores the current psychological instability that shapes our culture today.
Chung creates immersive audiovisual experiences that incorporates technology like body tracking AI systems to create electronic instruments that explore the connection between audio and physical gestures. His work focuses on creating responsive architecture that captures the relationship of sound and movement to define a new kind of embodied experience that highlights the psychological instability that shapes our experience of the world.
Max’s work has been performed by the Neave Trio, Hypercube, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the PRISM saxophone quartet, Alice Ivy-Pemberton and the Yarn/Wire Ensemble. Performance of his compositions include the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the New York Interactive Arts Performance Series, the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for performing Arts, the Longy School of Music and the Atlantic Music Festival. He received a B.A. from Brown University in Music and a M.M. in music technology from New York University. He currently lives and works in New York City.
About Elements! in Art and Tech. Programmed for the annual Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building on Governors Island, the artworks in this group show are inspired by elements of light, water, earth, flower plasma and their influence on humans. Selected by the Harvestworks arts committee and the Executive Director Carol Parkinson, the works use creative technology such as audio/video spatialization, gesture, body tracking and vegetal power.
