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.
