> Individual
ideas/plan
I feel the work for this unit truly began with my visit to the Ba2 sound arts gallery last year. Being in Gallery 46 and seeing how the students transformed it to make it their own was something special. My brain was already ticking with ideas of what possible routes I could take for all the pieces that I could create when it was our classes turn.
Experience and immersion had captured my attention at the time, especially in live/club settings. Despite being surrounded by music and people, I often left venues feeling like a mere spectator. I felt the urge to create an experience that allowed everyone in the room to feel like we had all witnessed, been a part of something meaningful together, rather than passively observing the performance from the outside. It was through this initial thought that I found my way to cymatics. When this project came around, it had been a while since my last set of experiments, but I was eager to return to the concept and the gallery setting provided the perfect opportunity to take my earlier ideas and refine them.
The work that became ‘Visions of Being‘ stems from the idea of composing with a dancer, or movement in mind following on from my work in Element 1 of this unit. The themes I explored relating to reconnecting with nature, the feedback between ourselves and our environment that were explored in my previous piece ‘Organism’ continue to be ever present in my life, so continuing to develop these ideas in a new form felt only right for this project.
I have been drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of rhizome (1980) or rhizomatic thinking for some time now as a way to move through and work with my ideas rather than a more linear, or arborescent way of thinking. Thinking in this way, my ideas can connect at any point. Therefore, each project serves as a checkpoint that can be revisited at a later date with all the knowledge or changes in perspective that I may have gained to give new life to any given project. This is exactly what I put into practice with my installation. As my good friend Joshua writes, ‘Listening to the creative force within and being perceptive enough to discern the appropriate moments for action or repose’ (David Hester, 2024 p22)
I have a particular interest in the way Robert Henke uses lasers in his audio-visual work ‘Lumière I’ from 2013. There is a beautiful simplicity by only having one colour of laser and creating the sound from the lasers impulse control.
set up
While experimenting at home for this piece, I only had access to one speaker, but I knew that I wanted to have multiple cymatic visualisations and therefore multiple speakers. This took me a while to get my head around once in the gallery, but with the help of Rory, the rest of the set up ran fairly smoothly.
I planned for each speaker to have its own distinct sound. The immersive experience only came to life when all three were working in tandem allowing the viewer to experience the complete piece within the space and appreciate it fully. This thinking was inspired by Arthur Koestler’s concept of the holon (1978), which posits that each part of a system is both a whole in itself and dependent on the other parts to function fully. This way the physical form of the work tied with the themes of being an individual but also a part of our greater environment.
music/sound
While I had a rough idea of what sounds I would be using before heading into the gallery to install, I wasn’t sure how the different speakers would affect the visuals. This meant I had to do most of the sound design work while in the gallery space. I gave myself ample time to complete the sound, but I still felt a sense of pressure to get the pieces finished in time. It was definitely interesting to work on a project in this way.
With my experience working with Joshua, composing with the lasers in mind was an intuitive step for me, especially with the instantaneous visual feedback that working with cymatics brings. I created two pieces of music for ‘Visions Of Being’ to show different the aspects of cymatics using lasers; ‘Cymatic Lullaby I’ and ‘Cymatic Lullaby II‘.
Both pieces of music use sine tones as the basis. Because of their resonant qualities these tones create a harmonious image. However, there are still captivating images created when using more complex or dissonant waveforms that I wanted to present in the work. This is why I decided to use a bell throughout ‘Cymatic Lullaby I‘. I have an appreciation for these types of sounds in this context as they fit well within the ambient soundscape but with the visuals they create an interesting juxtaposition.
execution
Although I am happy with the way my work came together in time for the opening, there was a disappointing aspect that the lasers brought. Having used small rechargeable laser pens, the battery life was less than desired. To combat this, I made sure that there were back ups that could be switched out when needed. However, With the installation needing to be active for hours at a time, the lasers quickly over heated and didn’t have enough time to recharge fully. This meant that the physical ‘art object’ that was in the room was obscured by darkness for large parts of the exhibition. Working within my small budget I believe I did the best that I could, but in future iterations of this project more research into a sustainable source for the lasers would be needed. As the lasers began to run out of battery they would flash adding a different dimension to the work that I hadn’t thought about prior, what if in a future iteration they were controlled by midi or some other software?
Both Cameron, who I shared the space with, and I would’ve liked to have a smoke machine inside the room to elevate our works. I planned to have the smoke to help give the projections a tangible, physical presence within the space but ultimately decided not to have it due to a lack of a power, we were already using a lot of extension cable and the smoke machine needed more than we could supply. We also decided not to so we wouldn’t have to worry about leaking smoke into the rest of the gallery.
> Group Work
We split ourselves into four main groups; curatorial, performance evening coordination, poster/promotion and documenting. I would like to say that each team played their part really well. I would particularly like to highlight Minsoo as he worked alone to document our works and did a great job.
Making decisions was made easier by allowing for each group to discuss their topic among themselves before presenting their ideas with the rest of the class. Working in this way, we ensured that everyone, if they so pleased, had a say in the decision making. This is something we knew to be important as a a whole class collaboration, and set out to achieve from the start to avoid any one person or group from taking too much control.
curation
As a part of the curation team, I enjoyed the puzzle of trying to figure out which works would fit thematically together to create a cohesive experience. I think that decisions came quite naturally once we had figured out what the requirements of everyone pieces were, whether that be a darkened room, playing sound through headphones or to be by a window. We knew we wanted each room to have its own unique feeling or atmosphere, which I think we achieved. There was one room which ended feeling quite empty with some people dropping out of the exhibition after we had already chosen where the works would be. This did, however, make for a larger performance space and allowed for more people to be in the room when it came time for the performance evening.
> Developing Ideas/What’s Next
Mark Wagner’s project ‘Cymagick‘ serves as an inspiration for future iterations of this project, as he brings cymatics into a live performance setting. I think this helps an audience to understand the immediacy of cymatics that might not otherwise be conveyed. I also know that sound and water interact beautifully and I have ideas loosely based on Boris Acket’s ‘Sunbeam, Captured’ that I am eager to explore.
Audience interactivity is something that I have been aiming to incorporate into my work but have not yet had the chance to. With the knowledge I have now about cymatics running in tandem with multichannel playback, I would feel more confident trying to create a synthesiser that connects to the display for audiences to interact with, as was my original intention for this piece.
References
David-Hester, J. (2024) The Effortless Way Of Books
Deleuze, G, Guattari, F. (1980) A Thousand Plateaus
Koestler, A. (1968) Janus: A Summing Up