EYEO 2017 – Zach Lieberman

Zach Lieberman is an artist and computer programmer who wants his work to fully human and break down the boundary between the visible and invisible. Lieberman is very interested in drawing, especially the feeling of drawing on a computer. Therefore, he decided to explore the intersection of drawing and code. He’s goal is to develop new tools that allows people to utilize their artistic abilities digitally because the current tools available are limiting.

While exploring art and drawings, Lieberman focused on changing the direction and angle of lines in order to create patterns. He observed the pattern that often shows up on airplane walls, and each of the line segments in the pattern seems to be pointing at something/somewhere. And that led to the creation of his project “play the world”.

Zach Lieberman thinks of radio as a mechanism for interacting with the world. He is interested in the visual language behind radio and radio devices. Play the world is essentially an instrument. When users are listening to radio streams live, they can identify musical notes that sounds like notes played with musical instruments. Lieberman programmed an interface that allows you to play those notes and used databases to create a software that listen to radio streams and find notes. It would isolate a specific moment that sounds like a musical note. He then integrated the idea into maps and the world cup, etc. That allowed user to play sounds or broadcasts from all over the world on a single keyboard.