Signals of Meaning

First exhibited at ZKMUSIK Festival / ZKM 2002

Collaboration with Kiyoshi Furukawa

SILVA explores the possibility of symbolic, non-linguistic communication through the internet—using sound, color, and movement to convey emotion and intention in a digital, abstract-sensory space. It questions how individuals can control the meaning of data representations and make visible the semantic gaps between culturally conditioned and arbitrary associations. Technically, SILVA is a flexible client-server architecture that allows various applications (e.g., MMDirector, Flash, mobile devices) to exchange data in open formats like XML. Artists are free to define how this data is interpreted and visualized. In its installation form—first presented at ZKM with seven computers—SILVA creates an interactive environment where visitors' actions influence musical responses from the system. The networked system's reactions, shaped by the artists’ design, range from orderly to chaotic, serving as a metaphor for the complexity and emergent behavior of the internet itself.

© Text: Christof Pingel . Translation: Wolfgang Muench