After spending some time with this gear-pile, I started to see there was a conceptual connection between these technologies. All of them were extending human perception through some dimension or other : they allow us to hear and see things at a distance across time or space. And most of them use electromagnetism to do it. This idea of using electromagnetism – an invisible, primordial force – to extend human experience and capability got me thinking about the development of these media technologies in terms of magic and science fiction – a machine that would magically transport you to some hocus pocus galaxy. “Dimension X” is this machine.

The installation at VIVO consisted of four parts:

• A number of "oscillovisions" – old computer monitors transformed into oscilloscopes
• An analog wave synthesizer used to create sound to feed the oscilloscopes
• A video feedback loop that projected an image of the installation back onto itself – creating an illusion of infinite regression
• A wall covered in old gear from VIVO’s archive.

Though I no longer have access to VIVO’s full archive of gear, I do have the other three parts and intend to use them in various configurations in future installations.
For example, recently the Oscillovisions were used to generate visuals for live music at the 2011 SquareWaves festival.

This coming Thursday, Dec. 15th, I’ll be displaying Dimension X in a relatively stripped down form : the Oscillovisions and the sound generator at eatART’s "art with energy exhibit".

Sound/Proof
an exhibition of sound art by Frederick Brummer

Feb 12 – March 13
Café for Contemporary Art
140 East Esplanade
North Vancouver

with live performances by:
Feb 12th Jesse Gentes, Destanne Lundquist
Feb 19th Julian Gosper, Keenan O’Connor
Feb 26th Control Voltage, Spectrum Interview
Mar 5th Kristen Roos, Josh Hite, Corner, 30stone

performances begin at 8pm
more info: http://cafeforcontemporaryart.com/

This show is a big deal, not for the world at large but for me personally. My “sound art” has evolved from a penchant for creating my own instruments. It’s been a real surprise for me to see this obsession transform into an artistic practice. So, for me, putting on my own solo show symbolizes the crossing of a threshold from a private garage tinkerer to a public “professional” artist. ( I put “professional” in quotes because I think “profession” usually implies the generation of some kind of income. ) But even though the show is ostensibly “solo”, the instruments I create are made to be played so I’ve invited a number of my musical cohorts and collaborators to join me in a series of weekly performances. Without the contribution of these talented peops the work doesn’t make nearly as much sense.

Nonsensical or not, the show is open to the public during daytime hours so if you happen to be in the hood please drop in and take a peek and a poke at some of my musical inventions. Or come out on a Saturday night to see them in action.

“Organized by contributing electronic music practitioners and interdisciplinary artists, the festival debuts an eclectic variety of works featuring new music performance and experimental multi-media collaborations.”

This year I played some music with the VEE, did a presentation of my electro-acoustic drum-synth contraption at the Synth Symposium, performed a weird transdimensional performance piece with Benjamin Beardsley, and even took part in the modular synth jam at the end. We didn’t really do posters this year, but I did update the website a bit. The original website was a collaboration between myself and Haig Armen.

For more on squarewaves and how it came together, check out this interview.

Here’s some photos from Squarewaves 2010.

Instrumentation

The proposed piece will be performed on invented instruments which combine visual, cymatic, and electro-acoustic elements. These instruments are based on an electro-acoustic instrument known as a “speaker/drum“. A speaker/drum is a drum fitted with a drum skin on one end and a speaker installed into the other end. The result is a drum which can be played both as an acoustic instrument and an electric one, as it can be either struck on the head or resonated via the embedded speaker. Additionally, by placing objects on the drum skin a variety of acoustic and kinesthetic effects can be generated.

In this piece, the speaker/drum becomes a cymatic visualization system by adapting two new attributes: water and light. By sealing water within a container and placing it upon the resonating drum, cymatic patterns are created within the fluid. Placing a light-source within the drum allows these cymatic effects to be highlight and projected.

For proof of concept, see these videos:

• Sound in Water
• Cymatic Water Instrument

The piece will be played on two of these speaker/drums. Each drum will receive a separate audio signal, creating two distinct electro-acoustic cymatic visualization systems. Audio signals sent to the drums will be generated by mechanical sources such as metronomes, clocks, and turntables, as well as percussively controlled contact mics. These mechanical sources will in turn be processed electronically to create a wide range of sonic and visual effects. Futhermore, each of the speaker/drums would be monitored by one or more video cameras and projected in order to enlarge the cymatic visualizations.

Music

The musical aspect of the piece is a soundscape inspired by the concept of Time. It begins quietly in a darkened room. At first only acoustic, mechanical motion is heard. Lights within the drums are faded up on still water. Tones are injected and the water begins to resonate. The piece langours here in harmony for some time. As the mechanical sound sources are mixed in, an emergent circadian rhythm is observed within the water. Elements of analog synthesis and electronic processing are introduced to the rhythm, increasing in tonal and dynamic range. As the piece nears crescendo, the audio signal to each drum is intermittently cut completely, shifting focus now to one of the instruments at a time. This new movement builds until it is cut off entirely and the piece ends again in darkness with only the mechanical motion audible.

Artist Bio

Frederick Brummer is a musician, designer, and sound artist.
In a previous life he toured the European underground, performing live electronica to ravers and bass freaks.
Feeling a need to make electronic music more tactile, Frederick began building electro-acoustic synthesizers out of magnets and drums.
Since his first piece showed in 2008 his work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and events including the Surrey Art Gallery,
Science World, the New Forms Festival, and the Western Front. Frederick’s work leverages strange integrations of high and low tech
to produce fantastic contraptions from an adjacent reality where “digital” still means “fingery”.

Related Work

• Speaker/Drum
• Untitled Drum Machine
• Untitled Drum Machine, recording
• Electro-acoustic Drum Kit

check out our tracks on SoundCloud : http://soundcloud.com/30stone/

[30stone now has it's own website at : thirtystone.com]

Both band members are multi-instrumentalists – which is a fancy way of saying we’ll mess around with any instrument you put in front of us – but for the most part Holly sings and Frederick plays drums. In the studio we take full advantage of digital sound production techniques, but we hope to keep the live show rough and ready.

gigs

• March 12th, 2011. At 2916 Commercial Drive, with mattyfromlife, Risa & Obediya Wonderful, Tarran the Tailor, King Ore, 30stone, Taal Mala. Event Link
• March 5th, 2011. At the Cafe for Contemporary Art, with Corner, Kristen Roos and Josh Hite
• Our first gig! August 21st, 2010. At the ZooShop, with Vincent Parker and Bartel

]]> http://overmindproductions.com/30stone/feed/ 1 http://overmindproductions.com/cymatic-experiment-02/ http://overmindproductions.com/cymatic-experiment-02/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:51:26 +0000 admin http://overmindproductions.com/?p=366 I’ve got a little further with my cymatic plans. Putting the light source inside the drum definitely seems to work better. I got some strips of LEDs because I thought they’d fit well in the drum but it turns out the multiple points of light the LEDs create aren’t as effective as a single source when it comes to projecting an image. Still quite beautiful though.

This is one short clip from a session I did the other day. I’m working on editing a bunch of the footage together to use in a proposal for an upcoming festival.

This is rough, but I’m excited by how easy it was to make this much progress. I’m hoping to develop and refine this into a sound art installation which gives control of the pitch and velocity of the sound to the participant/viewer.

This is how I hobbled this experiment together. I used my speaker/drum setup, which emits sound within a drum. I put some water in an extra drum skin, and sealed another skin on top to make a kind of drumskin sandwich. The drumskin sandwich becomes a kind of petri dish for the water. Place it on the speaker/drum et voila! L’alchimie!

I think this would be much more effective if I put a light source directly into the drum, but this is prototype action! That’s right. So I used this image projector for tracing that I had handy. Now that I know the basic premise works I’m going to see if I can find an opportunity to build this nice for an event or installation.

Last night Audiovox debuted at the opening for the Surge Festival of Urban Digital Culture as part of the StoryBox project.

Audiovox is a multichannel interactive audio installation. Speakers are arranged throughout the space such that on first approach a dissonant melange of sounds is heard. Moving through the speaker array towards the focal point of the piece, the soundscape becomes more and more harmonious. At the center, where the sound is the most harmonious, visitors can explore and affect the soundscape via a patchbay-like interface.

The patchbay interface consists of 11 headphone jacks, a dangling connection cable, and it’s own speaker system. Visitors can plug their own headphones directly into the jacks, or patch a signal through to the speaker, which projects down from overhead. Each of the patches outputs a different recording of stories recorded at the recent Vancouver Storytelling Festival, and while the experience of those stories are themselves the true focal point of the piece, the patchbay is the interface which enables that experience. As such, we felt that its form was going to be crucially important to the overall aesthetic of the piece. The image of a book seemed to be the perfect metaphor – after all it is a “literal” story box – so we decided to build our patchbay into a book. We originally explored the idea of modifying an actual book for this purpose, but some early prototypes taught us that this wasn’t likely to be practical. We decided instead to build a book from scratch.

The sounds used in the Audiovox piece were sourced from both the Storytelling Festival and from workshops held with the StoryBox project participants. The material was absolutely beautiful to work with. Collaborating with Rup to arrange this material into a multichannel composition was a magical process, full of serendipity. Most the pieces just fell together perfectly, seemingly with a will of their own.

The piece really has to be experienced first-hand, so please visit the gallery while the show is up:
Audiovox will be showing until August 28, 2010 at the W2 gallery, 151 W. Cordova, Vancouver, B.C.

We’ve been collecting parts for a while now, but recently we actually got started building the thing.

Check out Niklas’s perspective on his blog.

This past weekend I was lucky to contribute 3 interactive sound-art pieces to the Western Front’s “Sonic Playground”. This is my second time taking part in this event, and both times it has been both an excellent learning experience and a real motivation to further develop my sound art work.

Click here for more info about Sonic Playground on the Western Front website.

and here