Interview with Buğra Karabey/ amber09
Which art project do you attend the Amber Festival with?
My project was “Cry of Nature” within which a plant interfaced with the world using music. Bioelectric signals are measured from the plant and utilizing these within a Generative Music platform and synthesizer patches the Plant came up with musical outcomes that are responsive to the environmental factors like heat, light, humidity or the touch of a human being.
What is your aim with your art work?
I believe that Nature (that includes human beings, animals or botany) is at the verge of a convergence with the technologies that we have created. Within my work I intended to underline this convergence and/or close interaction using “Music” as the middleware.
How does your project works?
Plants react to the environmental variables like heat, light, humidity and even the vicinity of a human being. So utilizing these bioelectric signals and converting them to MIDI we have used these messages as inputs to a Generative Music platform to make “harmonical, rhytmic and music tempo” changes to the composed musical outcome. Also the same signals are utilized to manipulate some parameters of synthesizer patches designed via Max/MSP. At the end the Plant became both the “composer and the conductor” of the piece.
Could you describe your process of creation?
I believe the philosophical foundation of my works is the decisive and the most critical basis for the work itself. After envisioning a philosophical message the design and creation of the artistic outcome becomes a mundane exercise of melting technology with art.
How long have you been producing digital art?
Since 2004, I am also active on electronic music and regarding sound art/bio art I will also share another of my works during Amber Conference. Actually this is a follow up to “Cry of Nature” with the name “Clash of the Brainwaves”. Within that work instead of plant-machine we have a trio; namely man-machine-botany. Humankind joins the plant-computer interaction using an EEG, EOG, EMG interface that utilizes the brainwaves and other biological signals from the human player and unites these with the signals from the Plant. So the machine(Computer) becomes the “melting pot” for this unique interaction of two species using music as the common language.
How do you describe your art as an artist using technology?
As was mentioned before I believe the “coming as one” of art & technology (or life & technology or nature & technology) , is the philosophical foundation for my works so technology “inherently” is there and embedded into the artistic process.
What made you choose digital media as medium?
Same answer as the last question.
Do you have aesthetic concerns while producing your art?
I believe there is a rhythm and even harmony within nature. So while producing my sound art works I intend to capture this into the musical (or acoustical) outcome as my main aesthetic concern.
What do you think about the literal and figurative integrations of the human body and technology?
I am a believer in a doctrine I have personally envisioned and named as “Robotic Sufism”. Within this viewpoint just like in traditional Sufism in which the created is yearning to become One with the Creator, I believe the creator in this case being the mankind has to be and will become one with the created (technologies) like the robots, prosthetic cyborg limbs, computing platforms, pieces of software etc. At a certain point in time (not so distant) together with the convergence of technologies that are at their inflection points of evolution (like nano, bio and information technologies) it will become possible to get a snapshot of the synaptic structure within a persons brain and upload it (his spirit/soul?) to a virtual computing environment. So this unison of man and machine will extend the limits of prosthetic organs and enable the mankind to became really as One “with and within” the technologies it has created. At that point in time it may even be vague to mention about a human being as a single entity as potentially within the virtual environment that the “brain” has been uploaded it will interact and merge/unite/intersect with the other uploaded brains (souls) in there.
What we may become as a result of our increasing engagements with technology?
Please see my answer to the last question 
Interview: Çiğdem Zeytin
