Material Music installation | 2019-2020
Material Music offers an alternative approach to sonic materialism, one that emphasises the very corporeal materiality of the sound object. The work consists of a linear array of eight kinetic sound- sculptures, each of which is comprised of an electromechanically-struck block of solid matter.
While all eight units are identical in terms of design and functionality, they each utilise a different type of physical material. At the start of the piece, two actuators begin to strike the material blocks synchronously, at the rate of once per second. With every pulse, the left and right actuation instances in each sound sculpture are offset based on an ever-growing delay time unit that is derived from the speed of sound travelling through the specific material type. As the piece develops, the accumulating delay times gradually shift the actuation pulses out of phase.
With the passing of time, the delay offsets become more and more audible and visible, producing rhythmic patterns that morph in and out of phase across all eight sound sculptures. In this way, Material Music is a process-based composition that interlocks a steady pulse with ever-changing phasing audiovisual patterns that themselves derive from the very essence of the constituent audio/visual materials.
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