Transsonic | Sonic Fluidity

Transsonic (Viola Yip/Nicola Hein) is an experimental transmedia duo that creates immersive, site-specific performances and installations that bridge the vibrations of light and sound. They develop a transmedial aesthetic language using Yip's self-built light bulb instrument Bulbble, which generates both light and sound and the electronic sounds of Hein, working with Buchla synthesizers and electric guitar. In addition, they use a third autonomous A.I. musical agent (NicolAI) as an additional voice, which is trained live on the musical material of the performance and plays together with them. Transsonic develops complex cybernetic systems as a space for transmedial musical performance. Sonic Fluidity further develops the work of Transsonic: Yip and Hein develop instruments that use solar panels as microphones for light signals and can further process these incoming audio signals, as well as spatialize them on a multichannel-loudspeaker system; The feedback feeds into physical modeling and RAVE (Realtime Audio Variational autoEncoder) algorithms, furthermore into a chain of electronic effects in order to generate the sound of the piece; The piece uses an autonomous A.I. musical agent (NicolAI) as an additional voice, which is trained live on their musical material and plays together with them; Transsonic works with a laser projection based on the bulb instrument Bulbble by Yip. For the first time, Transsonic uses lasers as a light source and uses them to fill the performance space. The lasers are controlled by sound signals. These sound signals originate from the solar panel instruments developed for the project (which generate their sound by light falling on the solar panels); The project develops a highly dynamic audiovisual cybernetic system that Yip and Hein perform with.