Channelisation of Noise through a Rhythmic Grid: Brutalist Mechatronic Sound-sculpture

<p>The aim of this thesis is to provide accessibility and appreciation for sounds that are conventionally perceived as non-musical or “noise”. Ordering the noise on a grid of metric rhythms, and underlining its materiality through an audiovisual mode of expression are the two main strategies employed. Using the medium of mechatronics, mechanically generated sonic by-products of technological developments are chosen as the focus sonic material. As a result, the output of this research extends what is known as glitch music outside the territory of amplified sound, to a realm where noise is created physically and acoustically. Based on these objectives, and following an investigation on the use of mechatronics in contemporary sound-based art, an ensemble of mechatronic sound-sculptures is designed and developed. Varying in terms of material, sound-generating mechanism, and sonic quality, the ensemble is divided into three different instrument-types, each of which is introduced, thoroughly described, and sonically evaluated. Next, three new audiovisual works are developed and realised utilising the mechatronic sound-sculptures, in order to turn into practice the ideas explored in this research. These compositions – which are all exhibited in competitive international symposiums – undertake the integration of mechatronics in three areas of sonic arts that are interconnected with the sound-sculptures. Furthermore, this thesis also establishes an aesthetic framework that formalises a significant body of contemporary sound art and music that, prior to this work, had suffered academic inattention. Probing the various parallels between the ideas developed in this thesis and Brutalist architecture, ‘sound-based brutalism’ is coined and formulated as an aesthetic underpinning for not only the academically marginalised works discussed, but also the work of the author. Lastly, two audiovisual projects (a performance and a series of ten installation pieces) are developed using the entire mechatronic sound-sculpture series in an effort to realise ‘sound-based brutalism’.</p>

Channelisation of Noise through a Rhythmic Grid: Brutalist Mechatronic Sound-sculpture

<p>The aim of this thesis is to provide accessibility and appreciation for sounds that are conventionally perceived as non-musical or “noise”. Ordering the noise on a grid of metric rhythms, and underlining its materiality through an audiovisual mode of expression are the two main strategies employed. Using the medium of mechatronics, mechanically generated sonic by-products of technological developments are chosen as the focus sonic material. As a result, the output of this research extends what is known as glitch music outside the territory of amplified sound, to a realm where noise is created physically and acoustically. Based on these objectives, and following an investigation on the use of mechatronics in contemporary sound-based art, an ensemble of mechatronic sound-sculptures is designed and developed. Varying in terms of material, sound-generating mechanism, and sonic quality, the ensemble is divided into three different instrument-types, each of which is introduced, thoroughly described, and sonically evaluated. Next, three new audiovisual works are developed and realised utilising the mechatronic sound-sculptures, in order to turn into practice the ideas explored in this research. These compositions – which are all exhibited in competitive international symposiums – undertake the integration of mechatronics in three areas of sonic arts that are interconnected with the sound-sculptures. Furthermore, this thesis also establishes an aesthetic framework that formalises a significant body of contemporary sound art and music that, prior to this work, had suffered academic inattention. Probing the various parallels between the ideas developed in this thesis and Brutalist architecture, ‘sound-based brutalism’ is coined and formulated as an aesthetic underpinning for not only the academically marginalised works discussed, but also the work of the author. Lastly, two audiovisual projects (a performance and a series of ten installation pieces) are developed using the entire mechatronic sound-sculpture series in an effort to realise ‘sound-based brutalism’.</p>

‘Creator gave us two ears and one mouth’

Acoustic ecology has served as a foundational theoretical field for many sound scholars to understand the soundscape as a signifier for environmental crisis. While sound theorists like R. Murray Schafer and those in the World Soundscape Project have developed ways in which to critically analyze environmental soundscapes, these methods have often excluded Indigenous narratives which offer complex understandings of sound through embodied experience. In this paper I employ a brief description of acoustic ecology, drawing attention to its benefits as a methodological approach to sonic ordering, while also demonstrating the possibilities for expansion of this field when examined in conversation with Canadian Indigenous perspectives and notable sonic activist movements. I address how Indigenous knowledge systems, futurisms, art, and activism can provide critical perspectives within the field of acoustic ecology, which lends well to understanding soundscapes of crisis. I identify a few case studies of sonic forward Indigenous environmental movements which include game design by Elizabeth LaPensée, Rebecca Belmore’s Wave Sound sculpture, and the Round Dance Revolution within the Idle No More movement. In sum, this paper works to bridge the work of acoustic ecology and Indigenous sonic movements to encourage a complex and nuanced relationship to sound, and to explore moments for understanding sonic intersections at the forefront of environmental crisis.

A New Materiality Post-Speaker Sound Art

How do sound artists function in a ‘post-speaker’ approach to production? Due to the market proliferation of reasonably-priced loudspeakers, rendering them portable and reduced in size on the gallery floor, a standard emerged in which soundworks were formed of prerecorded sounds played back from loudspeakers in gallery spaces. In these instances technology served as the material, shape and form of both sound sculpture and installation, the speaker representing a conveyance of ‘truth’. As a reaction, ‘post-speaker’ soundworks grew gradually as an awareness amongst artists who consciously avoided employing generic loudspeakers, or sought to hide them, perceiving them to be empty vessel conveying artifice. Since even before the loudspeaker was affordable, perhaps as a way of adapting to the loudspeaker’s expense, and later as a reaction to its ubiquity, there has been an ebb and flow towards building on the physical experience of a work, either by generating the sound in the gallery space itself or by using the loudspeaker in innovative ways. The reaction to speakers is a self-conscious continuum created by omission whereby sound sculpture and installation increasingly return to kinetic tendencies, and hand-made and found objects in immersive works that eschew or deconstruct the speaker’s homogeneity altogether.

Click::RAND. A Minimalist Sound Sculpture

Discovering outmoded or obsolete technologies and appropriating them in creative practice can uncover new relationships between those technologies. Using a media archaeological research approach, this paper presents the electromechanical relay and a book of random numbers as related forms of obsolete media. Situated within the context of electromechanical sound art, the work uses a non-deterministic approach to explore the non-linear and unpredictable agency and materiality of the objects in the work. Developed by the first author, Click::RAND is an object-based sound installation. The work has been developed as an audio- visual representation of a genealogy of connections between these two forms of media in the history of computing.

Click::RAND. A Minimalist Sound Sculpture

Discovering outmoded or obsolete technologies and appropriating them in creative practice can uncover new relationships between those technologies. Using a media archaeological research approach, this paper presents the electromechanical relay and a book of random numbers as related forms of obsolete media. Situated within the context of electromechanical sound art, the work uses a non-deterministic approach to explore the non-linear and unpredictable agency and materiality of the objects in the work. Developed by the first author, Click::RAND is an object-based sound installation. The work has been developed as an audio- visual representation of a genealogy of connections between these two forms of media in the history of computing.

On the Intersection Between Speaker Installations and Urban Environments

This chapter deals with speaker installations and the potential to use such installations for designing soundscapes in cities. Through employment of a designer's perspective, eight intersections between speaker sounds and the environment in which they are installed are brought forward and discussed. The intersections were originally deduced by the author theoretically but have subsequently also been examined in relation to existing speaker installations. This chapter describes and exemplifies each of the eight intersections, which have been denoted as sound sculpture, sound space, atmospheric design, sound and light, sound binocular, sound postcard, interactive event, and retuning of soundscape. Discussions in the chapter cover the role of speaker-induced sound in relation to the notion of acousmatics as well as urban design.

On the Intersection Between Speaker Installations and Urban Environments

This chapter deals with speaker installations and the potential to use such installations for designing soundscapes in cities. Through employment of a designer's perspective, eight intersections between speaker sounds and the environment in which they are installed are brought forward and discussed. The intersections were originally deduced by the author theoretically but have subsequently also been examined in relation to existing speaker installations. This chapter describes and exemplifies each of the eight intersections, which have been denoted as sound sculpture, sound space, atmospheric design, sound and light, sound binocular, sound postcard, interactive event, and retuning of soundscape. Discussions in the chapter cover the role of speaker-induced sound in relation to the notion of acousmatics as well as urban design.