Wednesday 16th January
Today I built an amplifier circuit from a kit. It’s very exciting because I’ve not done any circuit board work since school (probably 12 years then), and this one even has a chip in it! It took a while to decipher the capacitors, but other than that it worked first time. I used a small drinking glass to amplify the sound from the speaker, using the speaker like a removable lid. The act of lifting the speaker away created a kind of filter effect, which was quite interesting. I saw another artist at the Sonic Arts Network Expo in 2007 who had placed speakers inside glass vessels, and by lifting the lid you could release the sound (which is kind of the opposite to what I’ve just done). It’s like any kind of visual art where you must look through a keyhole or into a box: a nod to the child-like impulses of the contemporary gallery-goer.
The reason I am working on this is that I want eventually to be able to make sculptures with contact mics and speakers as an integral part. So far I have only ever used consumer items because that’s all I could use, so it’s been hugely important to me to learn how to do this. It means I can make smaller, self-contained objects that run off one 9V battery, and which have no trailing cables (which I hate: not for aesthetic reasons, but because somehow I always seem to tangle them up). I also think it’s important for me to be able to understand exactly what is happening from the sound source to the speaker. This is not to say I am favouring material exploration over conceptual content; I just feel more confident when I know what I am capable of making for any given brief. This residency is a good opportunity to do that.
Thursday 10th January
Second workshop went well (but started late). The students really took to the process and whilst some were soldering the others were testing their mics on objects and surfaces (and hair). It’s great to get an enthusiastic group which understands why this kind of art exists, and it will make the performance much more valuable for them if it feeds back into their practice.
Friday 11th January
The final workshop also went very well. Between us we have made 33 contact mics in the last three days. All the students have been divided into performance groups and are now (hopefully) off collecting the various objects they will use. My only stipulation has been that they don’t bring any traditional instruments to the performance. This part of the workshop has been very rewarding; every student now has a hand-made mic, and a few of them have specifically said that they can see how they might use them for their final projects. I think it is important that students at this stage are aware of contemporary practice, particularly the less traditional strands like sound or performance art. They don’t have to make this kind of work, but it helps them contextualise their own ideas, and provides the background knowledge that there is more out there than meets the eye (as it were).
THIS IS A POST WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN DECEMBER BUT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE CHANGE-OVER.
Friday 7th December
I spent most of today helping the students to put up an exhibition, discussing presentation issues and how to turn an object into an installation.
I then recorded some lovely sine tones with a view to composing them next week…
Tuesday 11th December
I have been arranging the sine tones into a longer-playing piece today. Each tone is 30seconds long, but I am not sure how best to present them. I have done one version where a number of the tones play simultaneously, with each note only playing once in the track. It has a musical quality to it because the layers are producing familiar chords.
However, I am wondering whether the piece should be less fanciful and more scientific, given that the purpose of the piece is exploring the interaction of pure sound waves in the space, not in the arrangement. The ideal installation would be 12 speakers playing single tones, all arranged throughout the stairwell. However, the portable speakers I am currently using are having difficulty playing the lower frequencies, and only really kick in at around 132Hz. Given that I can only play the higher range of my notes then, I might edit the number of tones used for the piece, and perhaps have two stereo pairs of speakers. This would allow four different tones to play simultaneously, and I can choose the range to suit the speakers, and place the speakers a certain distance apart.
Hopefully I will be able to finish this part on Thursday or Friday, because after that the college shuts for Christmas. Next term I complete my residency, but I will be working on a large scale performance with thirty students, so there will be less time for amateur physics.
Thursday 13th December
I made a 2-minute piece which consists of four sets of left and right sine tones, so it means eight tones can play without interference within the track. I took it up to the stairwell to listen to the tones back in the location. The whole piece sounded very pure, as if it was some distant machine whirring, and some people passed on the lower steps and didn’t really notice anything. I like the fact that you only know it’s happening if you stay in the stairwell for long enough to hear a marked change in the tones. As I walked back through the building afterwards I could hear all kinds of tones from computer rooms and cleaners and air-conditioning.
Wednesday 9th January
This morning was the first workshop session with 10 students. The first hour or so I taught them how to make their own contact mic. It was relatively straightforward because it was a simple piece of electronics, but a couple of them had never soldered before, which took a little longer. Thankfully all the microphones worked at the end, so we spent the second half of the session playing around with the mics and deciding what groups they will be performing in, in two weeks’ time. I am doing a group improvised piece where six groups perform consecutively. I will be sampling elements of each performance to leave a running sound in the background. I have divided the students into three groups of sound-based music, and three of note-based music. They will have the morning of the performance to rehearse, but it’s going to be hilarious trying to organise 30 students at once, each with a different instrument…
Thursday 6th December
I’ve just got back from my little resonance experiment. As I suspected the stairwell supports a lot of harmonics, and with my basic equipment I didn’t get the root frequency as such. I did however note down 12 frequencies up to 400Hz which were particularly resonant, so I will play around with those until I have a more accurate analyser to hand. Interestingly, three of the 12 tones are in G, and three others are very close to G (less than 6Hz). I will work on an installation which uses these tones, and experiment with placement to explore the reflections in the space.
