Visions of the Amen: Kinetic Sculpture by Mitchell F. Chan (Video #2: Bjork Performance)

Visit www.mitchellfchan.com/visionsoftheamen for more information, images, and video.

"Visions of the Amen" is a sculpture consisting of strings dangling from wooden joists and weighed down by brass rods. Each one becomes animated in response to sound input.

Each string in the arrangement is activated by a different audio frequency, and will spin with a velocity dependent on the volume of that particular pitch. As a string spins, it sweep out transparent, three dimensional wave pattern with a period and amplitude that changes according to its velocity, and pulls upwards on the rods. In this video, singer Ashleigh Semkiw performs her arrangement of Bjork's "Unison", creating a unique choreography of 16 brass rods dancing, bobbing up and down in a forest of ghostly columns. A tenuous, ephemeral architectural space is created, and viewers are encouraged to walk through the rows of columns being animated by Ms. Semkiw's voice. Although the piece was designed with Ms. Semkiw's performance in mind, for the vast majority of the piece's exhibition lifespan, viewers may stand in the space of the project and activate it themselves by whistling, stamping their feet, or even trying their hand at the aria of their choice.

On a technical level, the responsiveness of the strings is achieved by sending a microphone feed in the sculpture to a custom software written in Processing by the artist. The software identifies, in real-time, the pitch and volume of the audio input, and based on that data uses an algorithm to determine PWM values for each of the 16 motors attached to strings in the joists above the viewer. The sofware end of the project is very similar to a sound visualization program, but with a serial output to an array of Arduino microcontrollers rather than a screen display. Earlier verisons of the project have run on the ArtBus microcontroller currently being developed by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• kinetic
• sculpture
• contemporary
• art
• interactive
• sound
• activated
• responsive
• architecture
• immersive
• mitchell
• chan
• ashleigh
• semkiw
• bjork
• singing
• string
• brass
• rod
• arduino
• technology

[wargamer247]

OK WHAT AM I SEEING HERE!?!? IS HER VOICE DOING THAT. IS IT AN EXPERIMENT