shapes for sound | inspiration

speaking drawing

I came across a really cool video by Michael T. Bullock (via Keri Smith). I love the idea of drawing using the vibrations coming through speakers. 

Michael explains :

In “Speaking Drawing,” a series of watercolor paper cards and 2"x3" art boards are placed in a large loudspeaker lying on its back on the floor. A very low, slowly changing tone is played through the speaker, causing the objects to bounce and shimmy around inside. I then drip India ink on the papers and blocks and attempt to draw on them as they quiver uncontrollably. 

 

Julien Dutertre

I really love this piece by Julien Dutertre, which was featured in the show "Cette année-là" by the Villa Arson graduating class of 2010. The exhibition catalogue is available here.

From what I understand, the record only had silence recorded on it. The needle was made to dig into the recording, gradually scratch it over and over again as the record plays. 

 

Julien has a similar work on his website: 

Sans titre n°08 , 2009
trepied, saphir , vinyle, moteur, contrôleur atmel, servo .

Un vinyle sur lequel n’est enregistré que du silence souffre de la lecture inflige?e par des bras de lecture robotisés. Ils viennent en détruire les sillons et créent ainsi la composition de la pièce. Cette dernière se cre?e en fonction du temps d’activation et des conditions exterieures. Le vinyle devient donc archive d’une monstration. La mémoire de sa propre création. La piéce sonore est achevée à la désactivation du dispositif.

(photos from http://www.juliendutertre.com/)

Cai Guo-Qiang, Black Fireworks: Project for Hiroshima

In 2008, Cai Guo-Qiang was awarded the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize, and was honored with a solo exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. A black fireworks performance opened the event. 

I also liked his Black Rainbow explosion project for Edinburgh

I found the shape and color of each explosion matched the sounds perfectly. The rapidity and precision of the explosions and their placement in the sky was just stunning, resulting in a very pwerful experience. I would have loved to see this performance in person.  

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at Barbican Center

I would have enjoyed seeing this installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways.

For his installation in The Curve, Boursier-Mougenot creates a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other musical instruments. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape.

27 February 2010 - 23 May 2010
The Curve, Barbican, London

© Extracts from Ariane Michel's film, Les Oiseaux de Céleste. Copyright Galerie Xippas, Ariane Michel and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, 2008

I really like the idea of this random soundscape created by the daily activities of the birds, the artist's placement of the guitars, and the birds' reactions to visitors walking through the installation.

Steina and Woody Vasulka, Studies (1970-1971)

During a recent visit to the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, I was able to check out Changing Channels, Art and Television 1963 - 1987, an excellent exhibition of artistic reflection on the use of mass-media television from the 1960s to the 1980s.

(photo by flickr user --m--)

One of the works that particularly stuck me was a series of videos by Steina and Woody Vasulka, a couple who were technical pioneers in video art. Their main focus was the use of video as a means of exploring fundamental structures of sound and image production while maximizing the medium's aesthetic potential.

As described in the exhibition booklet, these Studies (1970-1971) are abstract videos resulting from an artistic approach that views the electronic signal itself as both the material and the medium. In doing so, special attention is paid to the interrelation and/or coupling of various levels of video and sound, whose transmission relies on the same technology. Specially developed synthesizers were used to manipulate - independantly and combined - both sound and video.

Extracts of these 6 Studies, as well as numerous other works, can all be viewed on the Vasulkas' website: http://www.vasulka.org/Videomasters/MA_index.html

I really liked the study Descends, because the beautiful abstract forms remind me a lot of some of the graphic shapes I see synesthetically with music -- but the sound associated with this video has quite a different shape, ironically!

  

Inspiration: Eva Schindling, Liquid sound collisions

I recently discovered Eva Schindling's fascinating work in sculpture, where she explores the physical shape that spoken words can take. Her work was featured in Etapes:176, the January 2010 issue, which focuses on information design.

As she describes on the Boulder Pavement blog,

Liquid Sound Collision is an aesthetic and interpretive study of the interactions that happen when recorded voices encounter computer-simulated fluids. In a digital environment, audio input can have a more obvious impact on the shape and distortion of liquids than in reality. 

Each study sends two words that can be thought of as poetic opposites - chaos and order, body and mind – as vibration source into a fluid simulation. The waves created by the sound files run towards each other, they collide and interfere with one another’s patterns. The moments of these collisions are then translated into 3D models that are printed as real sculptures. 

The chosen words that depict dualistic world views are opposites, yet are displayed as the turbulent flow that arises between the two extremes.

I really like the way that Eva has used scientific technology - sending sound waves into a fluid simulation - to create flowing forms that are delicate and elegant. 

She talks more about the creation process in her blog entry, Sketch : Liquid Sound Collision.  

The ebb and flow of Paris traffic

As part of its new evening series of Friday Lates, the London Transport Museum is staging Sounds of the Suburbs on 6 November. The multi-sensory event, curated by D-Fuse, will also screen a new short by design studio, FL@33, called 8min20sec. 

 The short film is part of an ongoing project by London-based FL@33, the design studio founded by Agathe Jacquillat and Tomi Vollauschek. 

8min20sec (2009), FL@33 vs Mercury Quartet from Tomi Vollauschek on Vimeo.

The DV footage was recorded in Paris, they explain, "at the Place Charles de Gaulle (aka Place de l'Étoile) from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. It offers a bird's-eye view to the exceptionally busy roundabout below, in which the Arc stands." 

The haunting soundtrack accompanying the hypnotic, looping film – which kicks in after about a minute and a half – was composed and performed especially for the video piece by the Mercury Quartet. 

(More information on the project can be found on the FL@33 site, here, which also includes a series of prints). 

8min20sec (2009) will be screened in HD on Friday 6 November at London's Transport Museum as part of the Sounds of the Suburbs late night opening.

Source: Creative Review blog

Ryan Gander, at the Villa Arson, Nice

Ryan Gander's solo exhibition The Die is Cast is currently showing at the Villa Arson, National Center for Contemporary Art in Nice. 

One of the works that really intrigued me is this sculpture, described as: 

A sculpture made from a selection of chrome tubular bells without their stand, arranged on the floor as if they have fallen into a random pile. The selection of bells corresponds to the exact notes in the melody Grand Vals, by Francisco Tàrreg, written in 1902, also known as the The Nokia Ringtone, commonly heralded as the most widely distributed melody ever to exist and claimed by Nokia to be the first identifiable musical ringtone on a mobile telephone.

 

Anja Huwe

Thursday night, the Arte channel showed an interesting documentary about music coming out of Europe in the 80's by groups like Celtic Frost and Hellhammer. They also talked a bit about some 80's new wave, especially about the German group Xmal Deutschland.

Anja Huwe was the singer for the group, and has now turned to painting, among other things. In the documentary, she talked about turning to art because she found the colors more important than the music.  

She says : 

"When I am working on a painting, my inner eye 'shows' me music, sound and rythmns. This is called synaesthesia - a neuronal crosslinking of the senses. A certain arrangement of colours, and in my case, dots (for many viewers a very abstract way of expression) is the ultimate 'sound'; the essence of music that I discovered by accident."

 

Sources: 
Anja Huwe
Illamasqua