www.simonwhetham.co.uk
Channelling Location development
While artist-in-residence at Interface Inagh, Ireland, I developed a project idea which will channel the sonic activity of a place through motors and mechanisms in combination with found materials to create ephemeral kinetic interventions and situations. The main idea is that the process and results are documented through audio and video recording, and once this is complete all the materials will be returned to their place and equipment removed so there is no lasting trace or waste left behind.
With this stage complete I will be offering the project as a participatory workshop which will begin with listening exercises, site exploration, field recording and salvaging mechanisms from obsolete and disused technology, reanimating them by playing sound directly through them.
Below you can follow the process during the three weeks, from studio experiments to field studies.
The next collection of video links show the second week of the project.
I wish to thank my good friend and amazing artist Slavek Kwi for donating a few of his old electronic goods, namely 2 DVD players, a CD Walkman and a faulty car CD player. I also received a box of various devices from David Delahunty which were sadly mostly unusable for this project but I did have a play with a truck mirror and the motor from an automatic chicken coop door was added to the collection of devices used.
The following five clips show further tests and trials but now using motors from CD players, the round ones which spin the disc, the flat ones that move the laser reader and some that eject the disc tray. They were used to interact with a discarded metal panel, some shells collected by a previous artist, gravel outside of the studio, a cup and a large metal plate covering the access to a water holding tank.
The next collection of video links show the final stages of the project.
Here I managed to finally set up the devices and recording gear in some locations and situations that had shown great potential even from my arrival at Interface - the trailer of scrap especially!
The next clip shows a relatively unsuccessful try at interacting with a collection of plastic objects of unknown function. This was inside one of the buildings on the site but the wind was still strong enough inside to activate the motors.
It should be mentioned here that the motors were often triggered by wind rather than audible sound, but as the site is almost always windy it is an element that still makes the work site-responsive for me.
The bottom two clips of this set show motors on a walkway and the interesting motor from the chicken coop door mechanism.
The final set of clips shows the motors interacting with metal parts of another concrete tank, a large metal ring and fallen pine cones. The sound is being picked up by two Clippy microphones placed inside a Rycote wind jammer and a LOM Geofon. This combination gives nice details and also picks up the lower frequency vibrations through the materials.
It just remains to say many thanks to Alannah and Emma of Interface for selecting my project and so kindly hosting me, plus all of the other folk involved in Interface I met; Slavek Kwi, Phil Maguire, Aonghus McEvoy for the performances and hosting; and the crowd who came along to the final presentation and responded so positively to it.
The video links show the first stages of tests, with the first three using two parts of a CD player which move and make sound on a rusty metal panel found on site. The first is the studio test. Taking the setup outside of the studio, the second video shows an Arduino Nano field kit I built which has a sound sensor which triggers the motors. This portable kit is lightweight and can be powered by 9 volt batteries and power banks. The third utilises an audio recorder with both prerecorded sounds (beginning of video) and live sound (latter part of video) which triggers the motors.
The two video below uses the parts of the CD player to interact with a plastic pipe section found on site. The action in the first is triggered by the Arduino Nano field kit and the second takes live environmental sound from a Roland R-09 audio recorder, with the signal amplified using a 12 volt battery pack The sound is captured from inside the pipe using Clippy lavalier-type mics.
