Monalisa: Watch Sounds, Hear Images

“Monalisa: shadow of your sound,” by Norihisa Nagano and Kazuhiro Jo, is an installation that allows one to interactively “watch sounds and hear images.” It’s currently exhibited at the renovated ICC Museum in Tokyo (if you want to know more about the museum’s recent happenings, see the PingMag article “Rebirth of Japan’s Media Arts Centre ICC.” I (manekineko) recently went into Monalisa to hear the sound of my face. Then, I sang to it to modify my face.

The main component of this interactive installation is the software application called Monalisa that melds sounds and images using Monalisa-Audio Unit and Monalisa-Image Unit plug-ins. The audio unit processes sounds using image processing mechanisms and the image unit processes images using sound processing mechanisms – for example, one can rotate a sound sequence using an image rotation tool and likewise one can manipulate an image’s frequency levels using a sound processing tool.

[article continue on the page, with an interview]

You can download the plug-in software at: http://monalisa-au.org. (Nao Tokui also has some audio samples made using Monalisa.)

(Via we make money not art.)

[tags]mirror, sound, music, representation[/tags]

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