In approaching this sound sculpture task I was compelled to visualize the object first before considering its acoustic properties. This may be because my knowledge and experience lies in sound and not sculpture, from my experience in a sound design context it is process not source where the magic happens - this in mind I wanted my object to function as an acoustic processor for sound, for sound to be fed into, take on the characteristics of the object, then be passed on to the speaker; with the arterial cabling bringing its own character to the object along the way.
I first thought of a hollow triangular shaped form strung with guitar strings along its length with metal tubes protruding from the frame as a hybridized guitar/woodwind instrument. Sound could be sent into the object then be modulated via the guitar strings before exiting via the varied length piping thereby altering the pitch of the sound - but sourcing hollow metal large enough to be acoustically compelling, the construction, welding and everything else involved I began looking for a simpler solution using a similar principle.
By deconstructing what I wanted to achieve, i settled on a metal chamber made from two large bowls facing each other allowing an environment with which to experiment with sound within the object itself.
I suspected the acoustic properties of the object would be compromised from being placed on a surface, so I considered using a small camera tripod to suspend the object and drilled a hole in the centre of the bottom for this purpose.
Having settled on an acoustic environment being the basis of the object I wanted to focus on an electromagnetic signal to work with to feed into the object, being an intangible force that occupies space around electrical equipment whose acoustic properties can be harnessed via simple means I found this a natural solution in looking for a source to work with for the piece.
I have always enjoyed working within the margins of the ambiguous or undefined. Utilising electromagnetic fields for acoustic purposes blurs the line between the largely arbitrary dichotomy of “electronic music” and “acoustic music” falling squarely in the domain of electro-acoustics which suits the purposes of the task perfectly. I had wanted to work with EM for quite some time, and had only heard poorly recorded videos of homebrewed EM receivers made with tapeheads from a walkman, so I set about trying to source some for the project - requesting disused walkmans via social media and freecycle.
In his presentation, Rod Cooper demonstrated using copper coil components harvested from electronic waste as another means of creating an electromagnetic receiver for audio purposes. I was able to obtain a few of these from him and got my feet wet with soldering by connecting these to minijack and ¼” outputs.
This saved me time from having to sift through electronic waste as I was keen to collect some of these in conjunction with tapeheads to see if there was any difference in their respective abilities to detect EM fields, through testing both tapeheads and varying sized coils all seemed to vary in how sensitive they were in detecting EM fields, but no perceivable difference was seen in the type of sound they reproduced. I was somewhat thankful for this, as it would have added another layer of complexity to the project and I have a strong tendency to get lost in the details and lose focus on the larger task. Should there have been a correlation between types of coils or tapeheads and the sound they could reproduce I would have spent far too long searching for and testing new types of EM receivers to use, and may have approached the task utilizing these differences as a key part of the design.
Knowing that the EM receiver(s) would require amplification before reaching the object i bought a preamp rather than making my own from a kit to save time in the testing phase.
Now with a defined object and a source to work with I began considering how to use them together in the design in a compelling way. I thought about placing an electromagnetic source inside the metal sphere, then using the tapeheads and coils placed inside or on the fingertips of gardening gloves plugged into an amplifier as an interesting and engaging way to interact with the object, as an almost tactile way to perceive this intangible EM field generated within it, but obfuscating the source from the viewer, much as EM fields are obfuscated naturally from our vision.
Being somewhat elegant in its simplicity and being complementary to the concepts being formulated in the creative process I was very dismayed to have the test of this concept fail due to the distance between the source of the EM field and the receivers I had made being too distant to generate any audio despite preamping the signal.
As the EM field would have to exist outside of the object, so I considered using the object as a space for the audio to pass through or to enter into rather than as a source itself.
Returning to the design stage and continuing in the vein of using EM as a source, i considered incorporating radio signals into the project and purchased and constructed an FM transmitter kit for use within the project. Being able to harness an FM signal frequency on a radio and transmit an audio source to it wirelessly opened up possibilities for bringing more signal into the object from the space in which it was to be displayed.
As multiple sources were now planned, it was now apparent that they would have to be summed either before or within the object. Rather than drill an as yet undefined amount of holes and mount an as yet undefined amount of input jacks into the object I settled on using a small mixer I had at home to plug the various sources into so that i could keep the design minimal and simply drill and mount one input jack into the object. Though it would have been a compelling design feature and may have been conducive to a richer result acoustically, I continued to keep the design process as to the point as possible to keep the project on track.
I drilled and mounted the ¼” jack, deciding to suspend the speaker via guitar strings across the diameter of the metal hemisphere. It was at this point I looked into reappropriating more parts from a guitar as modulation sources as per my initial idea. Another student had bought machineheads from a guitar store nearby, using these as a fixture for the strings seemed a perfectly logical step forward and allowed some rudimentary modulation via altering the tension of the strings.
I had 2 square pieces of wood I’d removed from each end of a metal CD rack, thinking initially that the rack itself would come in handy - so with Rod’s help I mounted the machineheads to one of the blocks of wood and bracketed it to the hemisphere I was working on. I drilled holes in the opposing side of the bowl and fed the strings through into the speaker and out the other side and wound them round the machineheads. I also placed small bells on the guitar wire thinking that the chamber would resonate lower and midrange frequencies, so adding some higher frequencies via the bells may add some richer acoustic properties.
While in the middle of this process and while I had the full benefits of the studio I decided to mirror the suspended speaker concept in the opposing hemisphere. Being a sucker for symmetry this would allow sounds to be sent into the object, captured and sent out into the other side.
I drilled and mounted another ¼” jack, soldered the terminals and suspended the speaker with more guitar strings, but opted not to clutter the design with another set of machineheads and mounting plank.
I now had a chamber with an input and output, with the freedom to send any sound into it during the testing phase. I began with my ipod, dismayed to find that even with the preamp in the chain allegedly lifting the signal to line level the speakers would not produce sound.
I tested this by checking both speakers had the ability to receive sound and function as inputs (which they did) so both my soldering and the speakers were functional.
This only left either the signal or the amplifier to be the weak link in the chain. As I am not proficient with electronics after several hours of unconstructive googling into impedance and physical signal paths I contacted a friend who suggested the preamp was unsuitable for the job, as it can only amplify the signal a small fraction of what is required to power the speaker. Thankfully he had an already constructed stereo amplifier on hand that he had built previously, beautifully housed in a transparent tupperware container, which he described as having ”plenty of balls” to power the small speaker.
Thankfully this turned out to be correct, so I now finally had a functioning input to send signal into the object.
I began experimenting with different audio sources to send into the object, music (via an ipod) was very dull as it just saturated the chamber with an uninterrupted stream of sound with too many dynamics to be discernable.
I then looked at using a small toy sampler as a source for short transient sound effects that I could load in that worked within the space, initially thinking that resonant tones like waterdroplets, gong or chime hits and other pitched percussive tones would be suitable, and for the sake of being congruent I could record myself with a field recorder and then use the sampler as another way of interacting hands on with the object, though the sampler turned out to only be capable of sending mono output which created an unknown conflict within the stereo amplifier rendering again a situation with no output from the speaker!
My EM receivers rendered the same outcome, though the ipod (being a stereo signal) had no problem. I introduced the small mixer I mentioned earlier into the chain, feeding these mono inputs into it, then the stereo output of the mixer into the handmade amp and finally successfully made the speakers produce sound once again.
I then set about gathering more magnetic tape heads and testing the one I had wired to an audiojack through the amp/speaker inside the object. By running this tapehead into a mic input in the mixer I tested the head’s sensitivity to EM fields present in the following:
The PSU for the mixer
The tupperware amp
The speakers inside the object while wired/live
Various areas around my laptop while powered
A battery powered discman
I found the best results in the discman, i discovered a field in the centre on the underside that generated a gated low/mid frequency tone bending upwards in pitch at a rate that would accelerate and decelerate in an exponential fashion (as opposed to a constant rate) more crudely articulated as the “bouncing ping pong ball effect” (Aphex Twin’s 1997 composition “Bucephalus Bouncing Ball” generally serves as the shorthand for this effect by popular culture)
I presumed this EM field was generated by the motor spinning the disc inside, there were other areas around the discman that produced high pitched noise and other frequencies, where other than my laptop made this device the only one i tested capable of producing more than one fairly simple tone. I did not want to incorporate my laptop as a source in the final sculpture, so I kept the discman in mind as a source to incorporate into the final piece.
Having now whittled down my source options for the magnetic tape heads to just this discman, I started to look at other reactive magnetic materials to work with so that I could retain the tapeheads as the key input feature. The logical option was magnetic tape, I had a cassette tape handy, which i dismantled and lay out in overlapping rows along a wooden board. I ran the tapehead over these whilst plugged into the mixer/amp/speaker and after a few attempts at different angles was successful in pulling the sound from the tape through the tapehead and out to the speaker. Sadly the actual sound was not particularly compelling, much along the lines of the sound of scratching vinyl records at a very slow speed (considering the process is fairly similar this is not surprising.)
I remained committed to my tapehead interface for the object, so rather than aimlessly experiment with tape and heads to reveal the best way forward I searched the internet briefly to see if others had found any methods to perhaps amplify, modify or distort the tape or heads in a way that might make the sculpture more dynamic. It was here I discovered that an artist I admire, but have never indulged the time to fully explore his works had exhibited a piece in 1963 using tape called Random Access Music: exposition of music-Electronic television. The artist of course being Nam June-Paik who I had discovered several years ago via his Beatles Electroniques pieces (which I found really compelling as it demonstrated a means to manipulate electronics and visual displays in such a simple, physical and non invasive fashion without involving the digital realm either. I love all the surgical tools available for manipulating audio, video et al in the digital realm, but they remove the operator from the process inherently through interface, the user is abstracted from the experience. if there are ways to physically manipulate the material it is a much more tactile/direct experience, which I find to be infinitely more compelling/engaging/useful. Long story short, analogue festishism gets bandied around a lot with little other than fashion sense to justify it. I’m just demonstrating that my process is more deliberate than a mindless aesthetic bias. This detachment and diminished satisfaction with the digital process has developed over the past 2 years and has ultimately led me to the object I am chronicling in this journal. The intrigue and engagement I rarely feel with digital is present in experimentation with physical circuits. This is mind, it has been challenging to learn whilst maintaining this deliberate aversion to a cerebral process in the development.
Anyway, I also discovered that by layering tape several times, the head will effectively pick up more information from that location (a kind of crude method to amplify and modulate the source signal) I purchased a VHS tape and another cassette and began winding these around a flat square block of wood, securing it with stickytape. I tested the tape with my working head and it generated a louder but fairly similar sound. I thought about recording my own sound to another tape at a significantly higher pitch and speed than the audio was intended to be played at so that when the tape head was run over it by hand it would be offset and play around a sensible speed.
Sadly, the only tape recorder that I had in my possession I had just destroyed pulling out a further 2 tapeheads to incorporate in my glove interface design. I decided to push forward with the project as the board already functioned as a source and I could always return to this idea later.
Having only one working head, I pulled 2 from a hifi unit and another from a walkman with the aim of creating a glove with a tape head on each fingertip making the interface more dynamic and tactile. I figured that as the sources would all have to remain stationary, being able to articulate multiple inputs (on each finger) would add dimensionality in the interface that was lacking in the stationary source.
At this point it is worth noting that all development in the design process eventuated from the continual arrival at dead ends. This removed some of the excitement from the process.
Speaking of dead-ends, this is where I encountered the single most frustrating obstruction in the process, the tapeheads after being wired up to audiojacks in the exact same fashion as the working one I had been using would not generate any audio from any EM fields I had proved to be functional sources previously. Testing them again with my working head, then reading as much literature as was available in the first 10 pages of google returns, barely related youtube clips and diagrams, I was still unable to get the new heads to pick up EM fields and generate audio. There is nothing more confronting than slamming your head endlessly into your own ignorance and not having the tools to actually troubleshoot the issue or abandon the failing components altogether after having arrived there by eliminating all other alternatives.
One reference that I was lead to eventually by any lead that proved useful was the Handmade Electronic Music book recommended in the course outline. There is a diagram that lists where to connect the heads to a jack output on stereo and mono heads and various other information about tapeheads that did not solve the issue of the tapeheads not producing sound. I had tested them all before removing them and they were all in working order!
VERY FRUSTRATING. An encroaching existential torment of Camus proportions. All I was able to pose is that I had either damaged the heads when I removed them, or I had wired them up wrong. A Sisyphusian cycle of desoldering the contacts, rearranging them and resoldering them then testing against the discman, no signal, consulting the google abyss eventually discovering a scanned image of the same page from Handmade Electronic Music discussing tapeheads, checking that some glorious ellusive paragraph listing in step by step order what I had done and how to move forward had not actually escaped my gaze previously and that indeed I had arrived back at the point where it was time to de/resolder the contacts fruitlessly again.
As you can see, this is a point where a sane person has to take a step back, and come up with some divine insight into how to proceed. Unfortunately after an entire night of stepped progress leading to this dead end cycle of solder/google/curse/solder/google I had lost the foresight of the aforementioned sane person and began to thinking along the lines of burning everything I had done and starting all over again with a different concept altogether.
The next day I contacted my friend who had leant me the tupperware amp, explaining my situation. From what I described he couldn’t definitively troubleshoot the issue, but tried to give me step by step instructions on how to use a multimeter I had found to first find out whether the heads were still conductive and other information that would help work out why they wouldn’t pick up the EM fields.
Unfortunately the multimeter was faulty and the readings were unusable, we organised to meet up over the weekend where he could come investigate in person.
He brought around an old CRO (Cathode Ray Oscilloscope) and his multimeter and explained the whole troubleshooting process to me in detail as we tested the heads. We discovered that they were indeed still intact, but were significantly “quieter” than the tape head that I had been using in the testing phase. You can see by the use of that term that I still do not fully comprehend resistance, impedance, volts etc present in electronics enough to be precise about the disparity in the new heads and the old one I had been using. I believe it is a question of conductivity, the new heads being less conductive and requiring amplification to get up to line level but I’m unsure. My friend did explain all of the details really effectively at the time, but I’m fairly disappointed that all I retained was the multimeter settings, the disparity in the numbers and how they equate to approximate line level.
Basically the head i’d been using was already around line level, the volume adjustment on the mic input was sufficient to amp the signal up to audible level. These new heads were only a small fraction of this. I ran them into a phono preamp bringing the level closer to line level and then into the mixer, then finally into the amp and that joyous, christlike moment of hearing the damn things pick up fields we can’t see by making annoying noises happened. In the absence of champagne and celebratory food items I now tested my other 2 heads, all working through the preamp/mixer/amp/speaker chain. I now had 4 working magnetic heads to affix to the glove but would now require another 2 ruddy phono preamps to amplify the other two heads. At 22 bucks a pop and past the hours that Jaycar are open for business I looked around the house for perhaps a preamp that had been left by the benevolent “you could use a lucky break” elves as I felt that could not be a more apt assessment of my situation.
I found a handcrafted headphone preamp my partner had bought a while ago we had not really used, which worked!
I also found a large hifi amp with about 8 outputs, and phono, line, aux and similar standard inputs which would also double as a surface to place the magnetic tape covered board I’d made earlier. Being the Deux Ex Machina it was swiftly becoming, it of course did not work. I was a preamp short, and while being too stubborn to be happy with that, I really wanted to just move forward so affixed the heads to the glove and commenced a test run of the object as it was currently.
It was at this point I was taking stock of what I was able to present in finality with the object without any further development.
I was far from happy with the limited inputs, but decided to place the discman with the magnetic board perhaps encased in something so that it was not divulged to the viewer of the object what the source actually was. Retaining a sense of mystery for the viewer/participant using the object was still paramount for me. Most elements had been designed to be obfuscated from the viewer/participant as much as possible even in the situation where it was not particularly functional as with the object itself (facing hemispheres containing speakers that the viewer cannot see, perhaps less a functional design choice than a conceptual one I wonder?)
I’d dismantled some abandoned hifi speakers in this process and went about cutting out the speaker cone housing at the front of the enclosure to use as a cradle for the discman.
The underside of the discman needed to be flush with the grate surface of the housing/cradle in order to be received by the strongest head I had, but I did discover in this process that plugging in a jack connected to a tapehead into the discman’s output would actually send the audio from the cd playing inside to the head which could be in turn picked up from another head! This was a nice surprise, quite literally - it was very alarming to be waving a head around then have CD quality audio appear in the speakers from the two heads moving through one narrow point of alignment to pass the audio across from head to head.
I was fairly satisfied in creating a platform for the glove to be used that incorporated this tapehead running out from the discman, the fields inherent in the operating discman itself, the magnetic tape covered board and perhaps a hidden PSU from the mixer nearby to provide another field for input.
The speaker cone housing would not allow even the three tapeheads attached to the glove enough signal from the discman to be audible, I looked at other solutions - finding that the discman would sit flush against the underside of an inverted plastic flower pot by being supported by a smaller pot inside, allowing room underneath for the PSU and being a rudimentary opaque black form i found it fitting stylistically with the concept outlined above.
In my explorations for this object I had crafted two other pieces I had yet to incorporate into the final design. I received two bridge pickups from semi-acoustic guitars with amplifier and output jacks attached and fully functional. I spent several nights experimenting with these, finding that much like piezo discs these pickups were brilliant when placed on a surface, allowing large areas of objects to become sonified.
Clipping the rungs of the CD rack I had dismantled earlier when mounting the machineheads onto the sphere object, I lay it on its side, elevated it from the ground with two pieces of wood I spraypainted black and attached the bridge pickup, allowing the plucked metal rungs to resonate wonderfully at varying pitches.
I housed the second in an old stovetop kettle, drilling and mounting the 1/4” jack in the whistle spout, and the bridge pickup attached to the metal base. I now had another amplified kitchen reverb chamber with lineout. Having completely repurposed the item with only a subtle modification to form, expanding its function stylistically and effectively without having to destroy it, I would later incorporate this into my transformation/secret project.
As the final design for the sonic object no longer required the FM transmitter, I decided to make this the focus of the transformation object, as it would be suitable for the criteria of both the secret project and the transformation project. As it had emerged organically from my development of the sonic object and continued the theme of exploring intangible audio frequencies present in the gallery space through engaging the spectator directly in them via use of the object, the covert nature of FM transmitters and their inherent transformative function of a device that takes audible sound, processes it then broadcasts it electromagnetically to be received and reprocessed before becoming audible once again - and finally the fact that I would be making this device using materials and techniques which I had become familiar with pretty much covered everything.
Going forward these projects have inspired me to continue working with the electromagnetic spectrum and have pushed me to redefine and develop what drives me creatively. I am looking into expanding on the concepts outlined in my sonic object piece by exploring also visual information on tape rather than purely audio. Somewhat similar to the methods used in Beatles Electroniques, I would like to further develop a projected multimedia environment within the space fully immersing the viewer/participant in multiple simultaneous perspectives generated by the manipulated object.
Despite the problematic areas of impeded knowledge and experience with electronics, I am very pleased with the practical skill, the process of hands on exploration experienced and the process of concept development in the physical realm as opposed to the cold removed process of testing an idea academically, calculating an approximation removed from the thing itself. Immensely rewarding and gratifying to better understand what drives me creatively and what stifles me in the same way. I also enjoyed working with a medium that is somewhat intangible and mysterious, while also being a force that is natural and organic but primarily existing in the domain of the man made.
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