Difference between revisions of "BZZZ"

Revision as of 08:27, 4 August 2015

I am now at BZZZ!

Day 1+2 (some of Tuesday and Wednesday).

I made a pair of binaural microphones, and two soft installations from yellow plastic bags.

And I started packing all my crap up and setting up some sound. Tons of junk.

There were no more updates during the week. As far as making things went, most of the time went into creating the surround sound system: This consisted of three speakers hanging from the ceiling, with big metal lampshades to direct the sound. (short video clip: [1]) I controlled them (or perturbed, anyway) with fishing-line. There was also a contact speaker drilled into the floor (specificially a hatch to the floor below) and two home cinema centre-speakers, which I placed on two beams.

So, a 3+2+1 setup. The sub just got a send from all the other channels as the amplifier had a highpass filter before the other outputs. The 3 and 2 pairs were never used at the same time (other than in the later group improvisation concert on the Saturday, where some musicians had one each, roughly).

I also made a "telephone". This would be on day 3, Thursday.

Other than that, I had two "semi" workshops, one (Friday = day 4) in which not much happened (some kids tried the telephone: a cover of rice drop, some adults walked around, frowning a bit) and one (Saturday = day 5) in which an artist brought LOTS of nice junk. We made an amplified cheese grater which I have yet to try properly. We also spread cassette tape all over the room after a failed attempt at a DIY cassette loop, and then proceded to make farting-bowing sounds on the (amplified) cassette tape. This evolved into a group-farting-noise instrument, where the participants each had a stretch of cassette tape, all attached to a central (broken) umbrella, which was amplified. I've yet to find any good footage of this contraption... It was fun, anyway, and decorated the room for the remainder of the week.

Also on Saturday, I combined a borrowed electric guitar with one of my detached guitar pickups, and ring modulated the sounds in my Nord Modular G2. The guitar was played as usual (almost) and the pickup dangled in its cable, which I held in my mouth. With this instrument I could make swells (the output was silent when the pickup wasn't next to the guitar), clicky scrape sounds, plain guitar sounds, and intermodulated clangorous noise. I've no photos/footage of this either.

I also made some other Nord Modular patches to create new instruments. One was for my Baoding ball (I only have one). Here's a recording of that performance: [2]. The other was for my hard drive piezo turntable, and here's a recording of that: [3].