A k u s t i s k e H æ n d e l s e r ( A c o u s t i c O c c u r e n c e s )
the use of acoustic sound sources in electronic music
The project is about using acoustic sounds in live electronic music. Normally electronic music is played via speaker systems, but a speaker seems to introduce some sort of artificial distance to the music. When computer manipulation of sounds became possible to everyone, it was a giant leap, but spacy sounds do not have the impact they did 15 years ago and as an audience, as soon as speakers are involved, you wouldn't be surprised no matter what sound suddenly appeared in the music. That is at least what I experience. So as a reaction to that I've gone back some decades and started to work with acoustic sounds triggered mechanically... though from a digital platform. In the picture you can see the setup with 24 objects (wine glasses, metal brackets etc.) was used as soundsources. A solenoid with a lever is triggered from maxMSP using a Arduino board as interface to tap the objects. The maxMSP patch is a 20-step sequencer with some tempo features and patterns are plotted live and altered over time. The outcome are simple rythmic/melodic structures reminding of some early minimalist works from Reich and Glass.
A short VIDEO can be seen here.
The goal is to expand the system and the ways to generate acoustic sounds, using servos, motors etc. and hopefully also freating an interface that connects directly to the arduino, so that I can get rid of the laptop. Here are more pictures of the project so far.
With support from Danish Composers Society/KODA's funds for social and cultural purposes.