Michael F. Chan's Visions of the Amen

This is an interesting sculpture... It is activated by sound (the singer in the video is Ashleigh Semkiw). Each string is activated by a different note and is has spin velocity based upon volume. It was done using Processing.

Pretty cool, but I wish the video was better at showing the strings transitioning from one shape to another.

Somewhat related: my Study for a Vocoder

[via Make]

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).

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.

Study for a Vocoder

I recently concluded a residency at LEMUR with a performance Study for a Vocoder. For quite a while I've been wanting to build a few vocoder-like sculptures/musical-instruments... and this is the first step towards the first of them.

It's built out of a ink-jet printer and a slide-whistle. It replicates whatever sounds are spoken/sung into a microphone. It can also play pre-recorded music ala a player piano. Its main short coming is being a bit slow in changing notes, but a more powerful stepper motor should help improve its response time.

Dennis Havlena's musical instruments

Dennis Havlena has made a wide variety of homemade instruments. His website includes directions for making many of them.



[via Make]

Yuri Suzuki

[via We Make Money Not Art]

Yuri Suzuki recently earned an MA in Design Products program at the Royal College of Art.

The projects of his that caught my eye include Sound Chaser (which is a bit like a toy train that rides/plays rails of records, see above) and Prepared Turntable (a five-armed record player, see below).

Hydraulophones

A hydraulophones are musical instruments that uses pressurized hydraulic fluid, such as water, to make sound. They were invented by Steve Mann ( who is perhaps best known for his work in wearable computing). I particularly like the instrument's public art incarnation:


Pachelbel's Canon being played on the hydraulophone:


Overview of the instrument including early prototypes:


A variety of hydraulophone-related videos, photos, & links can be found at Steve Mann's wearcam website.

Phyllis Chen & her toy pianos

The other night I heard a fantastic performance by Phyllis Chen at the Christopher Henry Gallery on Elizabeth Street (NYC). It's amazing to see & hear virtuoso piano playing on the tiny keyboards. Each different toy piano seems to have its own unique characteristics, but overall they are more percussive than regular pianos.

Here's a video from the performance:

My hard drive is experiencing some strange noises

Gregory Chatonsky's project uses sensors to translate (using Pure Data) the vibrations from a malfunctioning hard drive into sound.

Musical tables

I'm gearing up to do a series of acoustic artworks and have been looking at what is out there. Golan Levin's Scrapple (2005) is quite cool:



Surprising similiar to Scrapple is the Reactable (see video below) which was developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Since the two projects came out at almost the same time, it seems they the artist/developers simply came up with similar ideas independently, with a couple of notable differences.

Scrapple's table acts as a score and objects placed on it are interpreted into sound chronologically, whereas the Reactable is more amorphous in terms of how objects' sounds relate to time. Also, the Reactable has specific objects that are dedicated for generating or manipulating particular sounds, whereas Scrapple will interpret any object placed upon it (which seems particularly interesting to me). I suspect that the Reactable is more flexible in the sounds it can create, while Scrapple is more intuitive in its usage.