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2014

Hong Kong Contemporary 14

Running from 16th to the 19th, featuring Missing Link and videos of my work.

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2014

ITV Big Think

An opportunity to see Play House again as part of ITV’s event focusing on popular culture in society.

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2014

The Mechanical Cabaret

A family-friendly drop in at the Museum to make mechanical toys with gears, levers and cams made from card, toothpicks and straws!  Event running from 13th March to 24th March.

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2014

AudioGraft Festival

Exhibiting between 25th February to 3rd March, Play House is an automata that mechanically computes and performs hooky and hypnotic acid house. A sequence of LEGO gears, levers and latches move to mutate riffs and rhythm patterns. Their motions are played out in real time on analogue drums and synthesisers from the halcyon days of 1980’s dance music, while the machine gradually shifts the timbre and space of the sound. With the process and function laid bare one can pick apart the interactions driving the score, seeing sound as it changes in sculpture – or simply rocking out to some fruity acid.

Commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music, Play House has received media attention in Wired.co.uk, Mixmag and Creators Project. A story entry about the process of the build is on Makezine.

Categories
LEGO Projects

Play House Prototype Videos

Before putting the proposal for this piece together I had to check that various mechanisms worked. It’s the most complex LEGO Technic mechanism I’ve put together and there is a lot that could go wrong (or maybe better put, a lot to get right).

These three videos cover the fundamentals of the sequencer, random number generator and other bits and bobs to get it working.

The sequencer keeps time and controls the main melody. Electrical contacts complete the circuit to a TB303 synth to create the main bass line:

Ball runs are used to create random numbers that control the sequencer and fire off events in the score:

Other mechanisms required to glue the whole thing together:

Categories
LEGO Projects

Play House Blog Primer

I’m working on an exciting new project with Oxford Contemporary Music for AudioGraft 2014 this March. It’s a mechanical sequencer that generates an acid house score. The intention is to have a deep hypnotic sound inspired by Richie Hawtin’s slower tempo work. As the title suggests, play is the central idea here, not just in its presentation but in the process of making the piece, so I’m going to blog the development progress on what will be an incredibly fun build.

Play House sketch

Most of my posts will be technical notes on circuits and mechanisms and also – and this bit is tricky because I have a difficult relationship with the language of contemporary art – I will talk about the conceptual development of the piece. ‘Artspeak’ at its worst is used for artistic posturing: ‘working in relation with…’, ‘questioning the boundaries of…’, ‘investigating the interplay of…’ (shudder). This is very frustrating because, like an overused swearword, it dilutes what is trying to be said. Art can work outside language so cobbling such text together reads as a) the artist thinks the audience is stupid, b) the artist is trying to impress a gallery, or worst-case c) the artist is just making shit up.

Anyway, rant ends. My problem here is that because like many others I find artspeak oppressive which makes me reluctant to talk about my work. I don’t put text with work unless the text is part of the piece itself. Perhaps it’s just laziness but I’d rather avoid setting up the wrong expectations, instead I’d rather see how close the audience get to my experience without cues.

Despite this everything I do starts from a conceptual root, and it is something that means a hell of a lot to me – I wouldn’t be doing this stuff otherwise! – so I’m going to use the blog to practice talking about it without feeling like a bell end. We shall see.

Categories
Blog Electronics

PipSeq early development

I’ve been off the blog for a while but I have lots of projects on the go and I’m going to have to park some for a few months so this is more a note-to-self so I can catch up in Spring.

I’ve had lots of ideas for rhythmic eurorack modules in mind for a while. I want to create rhythmic frameworks that can be used in live jams, I’m not sure if it’ll work but the modules should be interesting, including lots of the more deeply hooky sounds like polyrhythm and extreme swing. Here’s one in progress called ‘PipSeq’ (or PipSqeq?  Working title anyway):

It’s a minimal sequencer using an AVR but it’ll have a lot of strange features for experimentation.  After this video I was hoping to crack  on with the software to get the polyrhythmic/phasing functionality working but there are a few fundamental hardware issues to sort out first.  I’ve found a better LED driver solution and I want to put decent comparators on the inputs.  On hold for now but watch this space!

Categories
2013

Silencing the Silence

Solo performance, collaborations and install ‘Music of the Gears’ at this exhibition of works of Oxford researchers and artists, including video, dance, photography, poetry, and sculpture.  Running until 28th September.

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2013

Hong Kong Art Faire

Featuring ‘Missing Link’ and a video presentation of ‘Clash of the Fractions’.  Running until 8th September.

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2013

FLUXION

Exhibiting several LEGO mechanical works including a new piece ‘Pot Drum’ and an audio mix of ‘Clunky Drummer’ & ‘All Work and No Play’.  Running from 4th to 7th July.