Program

Rauschmaschine:

This interactive sound-sculpture is a former archive-cupboard, and sounds like the engine-room of a ship, inspired on Motorschiff Stubnitz.
It is based on resonance and produces sounds from a big auditieve spectrum.

With clean frequencies the whole unit becomes alive and starts to quake. Different lose iron objects, which are fixed on the unit, are following this movement. The quaking objects are amplified by mics. So you can feel and hear the physical energy.

Visitors are invited to explore hidden sounds.

IDEA BEHIND THE "SOUND-QUAKER" (SOUND-SCULPTURE MADE AND PLAYED BY MARGRIET):

My starting point was creating an object to make music with, seeing as music is not only destinated for accepted instruments. Already since my last self-built instrument "Noise_Lab" I'd become fascinated by the phenomenon of "resonance". Especially the "quake-factor" or vibration behaviour of iron objects, by doing so becoming in the audible spectrum. (Resonance:* in Mechanics the condition in which an object or system is subjected to an oscillating force having a frequency close to its own natural frequency.) I wanted to work out the more laboratorium-like set-up of my previous installation to the more monumental shapes of this one.

Besides that I also like to mix things which are normally not destined to be placed together, highlighting how easy it is to break free of daily life conventions and showing how automatisms are fixed in our behaviour without us being aware of any other possible options.

An ordinary archive cupboard which is used in an office seemed to be the perfect solution. The normally "silent" dossiers kept in this iron object, are replaced by an audible landscape of soundlayers. Beside that the cabinet itself as an object, has the possibilities I was searching for. Due to the size and character of this material it will amplify sounds at particular frequencies along with the construction itself allowing more ''sound making objects'' to be placed in the unit, for example in the drawers. Also the physical aspects of playing with the drawers attracted me.

WHAT DID I DO?
The base of this sound-unit comes from 2 loudspeakers I put in the drawers, connected to my computer.
Behind my computer I built a midicontroller with big faders. With each one I can send an easy basic sinus audio-signal. The two parameters are the frequency with a range from 0.1 until 10.000 and the modulation (frequency carrier) with a range from 0.1 until 100. By moving these faders up and down, different modulations and rhythms become audible.

After the midi-fader, the clean sinus goes directly into the cabinet, and thus will never be sinus again. The whole unit works as a filter in an opposite way (filter:* a device for suppressing electrical or sound waves of frequencies not required.) In this case: a device for amplifying soundwaves of required frequencies, caused by the energy of the wavefront of the soundwave, the iron starts to quake at particular frequencies and produces sounds. In this case the typically "engine-room-environment-cadence" of a big motorship (for example MS Stubnitz)

Additionally, I placed iron objects both in and on the instrument, for example some oven equipment, iron springs, big hi-hats and a metal bin. Dependent on the frequency, each time another object will participate in the thumping cadence of the whole unit, controlled by the faders and by me. On the whole surface I placed microphones to amplify the individual vibrations. In the life performance I am combining the different inputs together along with the overall acoustics as well and I will then play with one long metal screw-stick on the instrument as if it is a big violin.
Developed as artist-in-residence at NDSM-Treehouse, an initiative of PickUpClub