LeftBank Projects
Summer Show: 13th -16th July 2018
The Summer Show at LeftBank Leeds was an open call for artists to put their work forward for inclusion in the exhibition. I put two pieces forward, which were both accepted.
The exhibition brings together over 20 artists at different stages of their careers from across the UK. Working across different mediums including painting, sculpture, performance, and film the exhibition explores the many different interpretations of the theme of “movement” (leedsinspired.co.uk)
The First Piece: Untitled (2018)
An Interactive Piece for four joysticks and Eight Speakers
Creating sounds on the modular synthesiser
I used modular synthesis to create sounds, which I combined to make textures and movement. I made eight 'strands' of audio, which I wanted to be able to move around an array of speakers. In this case the speakers were set out in a oval shape, as I had to fit in the choir stall area of the church.
The application Max msp was used to receive the data from the joysticks. The object 'nodes' enables some scaling of an incoming audio stream depending on the position of the joystick. The linear scaling was converted to decibel scaling using atodb object.
“Click on the image to see the prototype!”
The joystick controllers and Tupperware 'brain' are connected together using 6-pin DIN cables
My old iMac running the Max msp software. I used Reaper to feed the audio into max via soundflower. The output of Max went to eight Genelec 1029a active speakers via an obsolete M-Audio Fast Track.
The finished piece was created as a 'demo mode' on the software, or participants could take over one of four joysticks to explore how the sound is perceived differently as it is moved to different speakers
Second Piece: Lister, Hear (2018)
The concept behind this piece was to explore a small acoustic space. I remember using telephone isolation booths to call a taxi from noisy gigs before mobile phones, and I wanted to create an immersive environment which could remove the surrounding distractions. The booth was suspended from a chain, as I wanted the possibility of placing it anywhere in the room (i.e. not fixed to a wall). This also allowed me to use two contact transducers to create resonances within the booth which might otherwise be reduced by it's contact with a fixed surface.
The booth from the rear
I used a low frequency, high powered transducer for the sub-frequencies, placed near the bottom of the booth. A low-mid frequency transducer was place further up, allowing the enclosure's acoustics to be highlighted.
Left side internal
There are a further eight transducers for the high frequency fixed to the inside of the booth with glue. They are connected to the amplifiers via re-purposed network cable
Right side internal
A visitor to the Summer Show experiencing the sound booth