Sophia Brueckner Featured in Stimulus/ Response/ Affect

Crying to Dragon Dictate and Code That Sings Itself, two works by Stamps Assistant Professor Sophia Brueckner, will be featured in Stimulus/​Response/​Affect, an exhibition opening at Oakland University.

stimulus/​response/​affect explores the varied ways artists engage the human body through sensorial, perceptual, chronological and spatial shifts, using sound and kinetic sculpture, interactive video, participatory games, augmented reality, social media and programmed software.

These dynamic artworks engage the viewer as a participant, raising questions about self, relationships, surroundings and society, and provide the unique opportunity to experience and actively (re)consider the relevance and implications of innovative interactive contemporary art.

Stimulus/​Response/​Affect
Curated by Collen Ludwig & Vagner M. Whitehead
October 16 — November 22, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, October 16, 6 – 8 pm
Oakland University Art Gallery
208 Wilson Hall, Rochester, MI 48309

Crying to Dragon Dictate
Dragon Dictate, Mac OSX screen reader, 2011

Like many computer programmers, I ended up with repetitive stress injuries to my wrists. I could no longer type, and I was forced to use Dragon Dictate, a popular speech recognition program, to interact with my computer. My seamless, ecstatic relationship with my computer was broken, and, at one point, I spent an hour attempting to type only a few sentences. Extremely frustrated, I cried while the speech recognition software was still running. This text is the result of Dragon Dictate’s interpretation of five minutes of my crying. I used the Mac OSX screen reader to read the text aloud.

Code That Sings Itself
sound, C++, 2011

This computer program maps its own code structure to sounds, which I recorded using the microphone built into my computer. It goes through its own code line by line and uses the characters, whitespace, punctuation, and line length to generate the music.