Sunday, 16. August 2015, 23:03 - 23:59, Ö1

[ DEUTSCH ]

KUNSTRADIO - RADIOKUNST



Coincidence and Control

by Eric Leonardson


soundPLAY


“Coincidence and Control” is an audio construct made from recordings with the Springboard, an instrument made of coil springs and various re-cycled, readily available materials. Its unusual timbres, resonances, and non-specific pitches are audible thanks to amplification with a single piezo-electric contact microphone. The Springboard’s diverse and extraordinary sounds belie its humble origins. It sounds are produced manually using cello bows, friction mallets, chopsticks, rubber bands, and wire brushes. Uncanny vocal sounds are also produced by wood bowed in a manner similar to Hans Reichel’s Daxophone.

Among other objects I use on the Springboard oscillators and a radio. Their audio signals drive handheld piezo disc elements. The weak vibrations are amplified and filtered by the resonant body of the Springboard when I touch and manipulate them by hand. The sweeping spectral motion heard is the direct result of my touch, the careful twisting of the disc upon the Springboard’s different wood, metal, and plastic surfaces. For some, the garbled voices and music transmitted may evoke tropes of radio art and electronic music.

Multiple coils springs mounted on the board sustain and reverberate any vibrations made. Due to its enharmonic frequencies sometimes the response is unpredictable as sympathetic vibrations sum together with particular energy. As familiar to me as this coincidental behavior is each performance is a heuristic, concrete and tactile process. When understood on its own terms, these unfamiliar species of sound occupy an aesthetic space between genre categories, just as nebulous and cloud-like as the sound of bowed coil springs. Above and below its spectral limits, in the background, at the edges of audibility, phantom melodies and harmonies are present.

N.B.: Only in the opening section and a section near the ending are sounds not from the Springboard used. Those are of the Korg MS-20 and digital resynthesis of some music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

For live concert performance, playing the Springboard is similar to puppetry or Object Theater. Radio broadcast is a different yet fitting way to transmit this experience, with its animation unseen, acoustically direct from my hands to your loudspeakers. I imagine these vibrations become part of your soundscape then, perhaps variously to blend, to enhance, to intrude, to amuse, etc. Your listening and imagination will do the rest.

Links:
Hans Reichels Daxophonie
„Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking“ by Nicolas Collins
Online-Interview