Oliver Beer Performance - Resonance 2008 Rome

The words of the Lord's Prayer are distilled through the internal architecture of a monastery and harmonised with in this piece of video art.

A choir find, match and harmonise with the resonant frequencies of a monastery to make it resound at its natural frequencies, similar to making a wine glass sing by running a finger around the top.

The choir say the Lord's Prayer in Italian. This is recorded and played back on speakers. This playback is then itself recorded and played back, recorded and played back and so on. Each time the words are re-recorded, the room amplifies the resonant frequencies, while the non-resonant frequencies become weaker. As a result the words distill into a series of harmonics.

The choir first match the harmonics, and then harmonise with them. When they match the natural frequencies of the room, their voices are naturally amplified by the space, along with the harmonics or overtones within their voices.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Oliver
• Beer
• Art
• Video
• Alternative
• Sound
• Artist
• Audio
• Resonant
• Frequency
• Lucier

[fergusmci]

Wonderful!

[anacrusisztc]

whoever came up with this idea is pretty damn smart