BACK
|
CCS-drawer - a Flash 4 impression... |
| coincidence | The small but - once the drawer is opened
- emphatic presence of the installation has something of a surprising effect,
while after closing the drawer again it totally disappears from the senses.
These circumstances were particularly attractive and inspired me to centre
the installation around action: cause and effect, but at the same time "coincidence"
or (a controversial issue in art anyway) "random events". The implementation of the notions causality and coincidence mainly find their expression through sound and cybernetics. Synchronism can be described (Jung only gives a mystical explanation) as the (fine-) tuning between related controllable phenomena and events (constant) and those who tend to withdraw from control and seem to have a life of their own. (inconstant) Something that could be described as "synchronism" (as Jung intended) occurs very often during the composition of various electronic sounds i.e. fragments or samples in a computer aided environment. There are simply too much available parameters to maintain and there has to be some measure to constrain or limit the possibilities: the measure of order introduced often seems to limit chaos more than creating "something" out of "nothing". From usual experience such a result doesn't surprise: energy is one swirling force which needs to be converted and reduced to be usable at all. |
|
|
| Simple
|
The simplest way to obtain order
within the computer aided composition system would of course be the classical
(musical) approach to define certain instruments and then use "the good
old score paper" to scribe a composition. But that entirely isn't my intention
(and maybe entirely not my competence) In general using sound means to
me: all possible appearances or combinations, not preferably musical (however
wide open the notion could be).
Using sound in a cybernetic system (which means not only during composition, but also during the "performance") introduces certain possibilities but also typical problems (such as described) which can be addressed by permitting the predominant factor of chaos in a limited fashion. Tuning between "cause and action" and coincidence will result in an intuitive cybernetic system, a sort of predictive feedback regulation, and therefore a "synchronism". |
|
| Specs | In the CCS - drawer 32 small speakers (Ø 9 cm - 3,5"), 1 Watt, 8 Ohm - have been placed, each combined with one red L.E.D. (Light Emitting Diode - 32 in total). |
| Visual elements | Two visual elements have been placed
over the 32 speakers, partly to cover de bare speaker cone, but also to
stipulate something of the meaning of the installation.
circle = starry sky (chaos)
The layout of the speaker / visual element and L.E.D. assembly has been projected in a "variation pattern" - to visualize the variability of the installation. |
 |
| Amiga | Each speaker can emit sound fed through
a dedicated amplifier circuit (32 in total) and can be separately controlled
by the operating system. The L.E.D.'s indicate the active speaker(s) in
any given moment.
The computer used is an Amiga (Commodore †), particularly suitable for this installation because of it's built-in sound system (4 voices in 2 channels, 8 bits, max. 28 Khz. D.A.C. [Digital to Analogue Converter] system). Through a home brewed port interface, each input of the amplifiers can be coupled to the 2 output sound channels of the Amiga by a "soft-switching" circuitry (to avoid clicks and pops) and dynamically "mapped" to the sounds in space (the surface of the drawer). |
| audio samples | The source of the sounds are samples
(base frequency: 14 Khz.) from various origins, which can be endlessly
sliced in shorter or longer fragments, with variations in frequency (from
approx. 4 Khz to 28 Khz), in any direction (forward - backwards), for any
duration in time (loops), with volume variations in 64 steps and distributed
over any or all of the 4 voices in 2 channels. The total sample length
amounts to 1,8 Mega bytes (this is about the maximum memory allocation
for instant sound output within the Amiga sound system).
The "auto-start / auto-load" program to control the system was written
in Amos basic language.
After a start detection the CCS - drawer softly starts to sound: each and every time in a (slightly) different way but with six main compositions as a basis (also Randomly selected). |
|
| Fireworks | The large number of possible combinations and parameters of the electronic generated sounds and their mapping to the speaker system, ultimately leads to a "control-density" too difficult to master: coincidence must have its way, but in a regulated fashion. Synchronism in the form of a structure of sounds, limiting chaos, but harvesting the richest results: a lively scene, a little bit like fireworks - though not as sensational - which is a perfect example of a controlled, but not eliminated predominant factor of chaos. |
|
info@abandon.nl |
. |  |
| . | • Stichting Abandon • p/a Josephstraat 97-B • 3014 TL Rotterdam • Netherlands • Europe • |
