Steven Shearer's "Improved Geometric..."

Steven Shearer's Improved Geometric Mechanotherapy Cell for Harmonic Alignment of Movements and Relations (2009) is an interesting work. I think the 2009 date on it might be wrong though... I'm pretty sure I saw it at the New Museum in 2008 (or at some point anyway).

Here's an excerpt from the Shearer's 2008 New Museum show's catalog:

The new sculpture I'm making is...based on an old picture of a jungle gym that was constructed out of four-inch PVC sewer pipe. I liked the idea that this utopian object was constructed out of plumbing material and maybe it is now the plumber taking on the role of the social-engineer-- this is his meditation on how to create equilibrium and harmony amongst young people!

...

The full-sized PVC version will be about nine square feet, and it will have a sound component to it that will generate subtle vibrations and tones that I plan to make with a bass guitar, kind of like chimes trying to summon people. Speakers along with tactile transducers will be housed within it to create an illusion that the tones become louder when you touch the sculpture. I like the idea of a sculpture that tries to turn people's bodies into instruments.

[via Rhizome]

Kenny Marshall's "prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices"

Kenny Marshall has portfolio full of interesting kinetic work. He describes his prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices as being:

... a group of small robotic sculptures, each connected to its immediate neighbors via wires, that together form a net of robotic life that spreads across the Garden at the Mattress Factory and over nearby structures. These twenty-five mechanical crickets fill the garden with sound as they listen to their neighbors and act accordingly during Pittsburgh's Robot250 festival. Using Dr. John Conway’s rules for The Game of Life, each robot activates when a preset number of his neighbors is active and deactivates if too few or too many of his neighbors are active.

The Game of Life is an interesting simulation of simple life that been a favorite of geeky-types since 1970. Worth checking out (if you're a geeky-type).

Chu Yun's "Constellation"

Constellation, 2006, Chu Yun

The animated gif is a slowed down version of one created by Ilia Ovechkin.

[via Rhizome & Rhizome]

The Books's "Spoonbox"

The music group The Books (Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto) have created a nice bit of kinetic sculpture (see above). I particularly like that that it uses sound vibrations, not motors or servos, to move the spoons. Very elegant.

Here is how The Books describe it:

I built this prototype of the Spoonbox out of wood, plexiglass, zinc plates, measuring spoons, and closeout radioshack parts. It hooks up to a CD player and small amplifier which cause the spoons to dance. There are small speakers behind the spoons that move in response to the sounds on the CD which I carefully composed using low frequency sine waves and kitchen sounds. The speakers, in turn, blow small puffs of air into the spoons which cause them to bounce/vibrate in rhythmic patterns. It really must be seen to be understood, but this video might give you some sense of what it does.

[via BoingBoing]


Another work in this vein is David Moreno's Stereomo (2004), which I saw at the Greater New York show in 2005 at PS1. Stereomo consisted of two speaker components mounted on flexible steel rods. The speakers emit inaudible, low frequency sounds that cause them to sway along with other, pulsing sounds that play of the metronomic motion.

Demirjian & Seldess's "Nitrogen Cycles"

I've been meaning to blog about Andrew Demirjian & Zachary Seldess's Nitrogen Cycles (2009) ever since I saw it early this year at Gallery Aferro.

A video of the artwork can be seen on Demirjian's website.

Here's how Andrew Demirjian describes the work:

Nitrogen Cycles is an 8-channel sound art installation that sonically maps the daily activity of live fish into the gallery space. A rectangular fish tank stands in the center of the gallery and each fish is assigned a unique tone that spatially travels through the rectangular gallery corresponding to that fish’s activity. The music generated is a reflection of the dynamic shifts in the location, speed and the relationship between the fish in their daily lives. Through motion and color tracking a sonic transposition is created that immerses the listener into an aural experience of the movements inside the fish tank. This twists the visitor's traditional sensory experience by putting their ears inside the tank and the eyes outside of it.

Four speakers are low to the ground and an additional four are over six feet high in the air, so we hear the fish sound travel and pan with height fluctuations as well as width. The pitch scales from low to high on the y-axis, and the x-axis controls a tremolo effect that is fastest at the center of the tank and slower at the edges. When a fish moves quickly the sound is processed with a filtering effect that emphasizes their sharp movement.