03_reflected territories 1
Reflected Territories
installed at Good Citizen Gallery, St. Louis 2009
The sculpture reflects, amplifies, or attenuates sounds as they move through the successively smaller openings of its body, scattering them. A complex arrangement is built as microphones rerecord at specific places for analysis and manipulation by computer, creating a dynamic score according to coded behaviors of the program.
Reflected Territories is a sculptural work that shapes sound with constructed objects and the architecture of the building. The stainless steel tetrahedron (Serpinski Sponge) has a very distinct affect upon the sound. It was designed in collaboration with computer scientists and physicists and made with CNC technologies. It reflects, obstructs, amplifies, or attenuates certain sounds depending on their wavelength and volume. The entire sound field is initiated by introducing a single sound into the room, a recording of one key from a piano in need of tuning which quickly becomes a very complex arrangement of sound. Some frequencies can pass through each of the successively smaller iterations of the open triangles while other are reflected in other directions or killed altogether.Microphones gather the sounds at different points and create a feedback loop of the sounds by sending them back through the small speaker and the larger parabolic speaker placed a few feet from the sculpture. A microphone connected to a second computer captures the resonant frequencies that bounce through the building itself and projects them via the octagonal speaker. The arrangement of the sounds is dictated by what is periodically re-recorded, analyzed, and changed according to coded behaviors. The animal hides provide another set of references but also function to dampen the sound.
In addition to the installation, Andrew at Good Citizen generously funds the production of work for the billboard atop the building.
