Contact Microphone Installation
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The Grant for this project has been submitted. We will hear back from old money-bags April 1st.
Contents |
INTRODUCTION
The installation will be comprised of traditional, nontraditional, and wind-driven musical instruments whose mechanical vibrations will be amplified with contact microphones.
The idea of the project is to capture the subliminal sounds of the physical interaction we have with the world, the ones that normally lie beneath the threshold of perception (the sounds when we touch or scratch something, for instance) and amplify and modulate them through a computer and amplifier into the enveloping sounds of the installation. The minuscule sounds we never hear thus become so loud as to dominate our perception.
This exposure of the limitations of normal auditory perception is ideally suited to exhibition at Burning Man, whose art exhibitions place an extreme emphasis on sensory modulation. At the festival, participants wander from installation to installation experimenting with each; this project is well-suited to this model of participation, because of the nuanced but link between participant action (motion) and sound (idiosyncratic response to the exact motion of the participant).
The sound produced by the project will be streamed on web radio. Various pieces of the audio output will also be selected and assembled into a permanent recording. This project was partially inspired by composer and Oberlin professor Tom Lopez�s work.
To Do!
This is just a generic list. If this is your project please tailor it to your needs ~macri
- Volunteer to help out this project
- Request or Donate Materials!
- How are you going to get it to the playa?
- Register
- Plan your clean-up
- Do you need Staging and Construction Space?
- Document your energy needs so the Con Ed Man can help you out
- Are you planning any events? Let the Event Coordinator help you
- What are your space needs? Let the urban planner know so s/he can feng your shui
- Are you going to need grunt labor or someone to attend to certain daily chores? Let our cruel task-master know and s/he will be happy to assign you solitary slave or a whole a chain gang
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The project involves ordinary instruments such as the violin, cello, or viola, and less ordinary instruments, such as closely miked resonance bowls filled with water, theremin circuits, or sculptural instruments that have no resonating bodies but have many different materials and structures that allow for a variety of ways for tactile interaction. These instruments will be wired with piezoelectric contact microphones, which pick up the mechanical vibrations and transform them to sound. When people touch the instruments, the microphones will pick up the vibrations and transmit to the computer and amplifier, so that all the sounds created by the infinite different ways of touching or handling something are translated into an auditory language that plays with our notions of sound, music, and motion.
In contrast to the usual model of audience interaction with music � passively watching the distant bowing of professional musicians on traditional instruments � the musical action in this installation comes from the physical movement of the participants. In fact, the only reason to have traditional instruments, and not simply an array of creative sculptural installations, is to provide a visual cue both as to the purpose of the installation and the means of interacting with it. The number of sounds that can be produced is only limited by the physical ingenuity of the participants.
INSTALLATION AND LOCATION
The desert landscape of Burning Man provides an ideal environment for a physically isolated installation of the project, so it can stand by itself in a space where the only sounds are those from those normally subliminal physical interactions that the project amplifies. After exhibiting this project at the Burning Man Festival, the infrastructure can be easily transported for reinstallation on the Princeton campus and at other venues.
BUDGET
The grant will enable us to purchase speakers, transport and rent a generator, buy fuel, used instruments, materials for the novel instruments, and other necessities for the project. The funds will also enable us to purchase digital storage that will allow us to record the sound output produced by the installation. For estimated expenses, please see the appended spreadsheet.
