All Original art on this page is protected ©2023 Marianne Bickett

Pencil on paper with digitalized color, 9 "x 12"

Rethinking: We Can Change Our Minds

"We humans are both selfish and sociable creatures" says Richard Heinberg in his Think Resilience series mentioned above. While selfish behaviors are deeply embedded into our hardwiring for survival, we learned over time to be cooperative and develop empathy also to survive. The neocortex, the "new brain", of mammals has developed sophisticated mechanisms based on cultural stories. Our brains are incredibly "plastic", meaning they can be rewired and change, just by changing our thinking! "Neurons that fire together wire together" (Neurologist Donald Hebb) is how we begin to reshape our priorities and focus to forge new traits and habits and relationships. We are too willing to sacrifice the well-being of the future for immediate gains and it's time to rethink the emphasis on consumerism to cooperation and living in balance with nature. I was inspired by a large, old tree in our son's yard on Oahu when I created this drawing, emphasizing that we can grow new brains and change our minds and save our children's and grandchildren's future.  Time to Rethink Everything!! Thank you to @What's Next for Earth for this opportunity to participate in the bi-monthly art calls!!

"Drawing Sound: Using the Wacom tablet as an independent drawing surface while also controlling Kyma." (co-authored/presented with Brian Belet, composer).

  --  Paper presentation & interactive demo. Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS 2018), Santa Cruz, CA, September 9, 2018.

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Research overview:

What happens when a visual artist creates a drawing in real time on a Wacom table and the pen data is simultaneously used to control an interactive Kyma sound synthesis Timeline? Does the artist keep to her original drawing plan while the Kyma sounds unfold? Or, does the artist respond to Kyma and alter the drawing plan (which then alters Kyma’s sound output)? As the artist learns the larger ecosystem environment, does she even anticipate future sound results, which then affects her drawing plan? Does the artist watch the projected image (as the Wacom surface itself is blank)? What is the dividing line between sonification and a dual artistic creation? Who interacts with who, and what affects what?

This conference demo presented the technical issues that surrounded the project, including difficulties that exist when using the Wacom pen’s output data to simultaneously drive a drawing program and Kyma as input data. The aesthetic issues listed above were also discussed, with solutions presented in both the visual and aural domains. The authors demonstrated aspects of their own artistic realms, as well as the interaction between the two, with both successes and remaining challenges discussed as a work in progress report.

Visual artist Marianne Bickett enjoys blind contour drawing and gesture sketching, techniques that lend themselves to real-time performance. In this context, the process of drawing is the composition. Composer Brian Belet uses Kyma as a live performance system in addition to a research sound design platform. For each artist, the spontaneity of gestures in performance, based on a preconceived macro plan, was the primary interest for this collaboration. For this project, a Kyma TimeLine was constructed to accept input data from the Wacom tablet, using the pen’s X, Y, Z, and tilt motions to control various parameters. Marianne created a drawing on the Wacom tablet (which was projected onto a screen in real time), and the pen data was routed into Kyma. What emerged was a linked (in both concrete and abstract ways) performance art work that took shape during the time period of the conference presentation.