Transduction
Transduction is a generative, site specific sound installation conceived for the facade of the space for artistic experiments Reagenz in Graz. The work is installed in a small window niche next to the entrance door and connects a physical setup - consisting of three thin glass surfaces, one pick-up microphone and two transducers - with a sound synthesis program. The transducers excite the glass, creating two oscillating membranes that project sound outside, and simultaneously the microphone feeds vibrations back into the software to initiate sound processes.
The synthesis software consists of a feedback delay network that simulates a room with infinite reflections in which sound waves can potentially travel forever. After an initial perturbation the room resonates and eventually enters a state of self-oscillation, generating and maintaining a periodic motion that creates standing tones, echoes, reverberations and other cyclic sound developments. The model adapts itself and continuously changes the room dimensions according to its own output. This affects the recursion of sound, altering or interrupting emerging resonances and articulating them over time. The model is completely deterministic meaning that, when excited with the same perturbation, it will always generate the exact same sound development.
Every thirty minutes one transducer plays back a noise impulse that is simultaneously recorded by the microphone and then used as initial perturbation for the network. Due to the non-linearity of the glass the resulting impulse is always slightly different from the previous ones. The feedback network is composed in order to be extremely sensible to this initial condition. It amplifies the small, imperceptible differences into unique motions and sound gestures and makes the act of transduction, as well as the characteristic of the transducers involved, a central form generating principle. The interaction between the physical setup and the sound processing software generates ten different sound pieces every day, one every half an hour, starting at 2pm and ending at 7pm.
More details about this piece here. The works is part of the parcour Algorithmic Segments.
