Maker Music Festival: Centripetal Sound

Centripetal Sound

Installation of 6 sound generators called Rotifiers.

I designed the Rotifier to achieve a continuous rolling sound of metal. I settled on this design of a horizontally mounted steel ring 38" diameter that could rock up and down via a servo motor. A 3" diameter steel pole is mounted about 3' below the ring on a ball transfer. This allows the pole to roll around the inside edge of the ring as it rocks up and down, the pole is generally rolling downhill.(A ball transfer is a steel ball about 1" diameter that is sits in a hemisphere of small ballbearings so it spins easily. They are used in shipping areas to allow boxes to slide along)

The movements of the Rotifiers were generated in a MAX MSP patch written by a colleague, Bill Hsu.

The Rotifiers were an the result of pursuing a continuous rolling motion, a continuous rolling sound, using a horizontally mounted ring that could oscillate and cause a steel tube to roll around.
I had been messing around with this idea when Kim Stringfellow got in touch and asked if I wanted to do something in a series she was producing at San Diego State University.
This was the result.

Matt Heckert : Machine,sound,instrument builder

I began building machines and crating soundtracks with Survival Research Laboratories in the 1980s. During this approximately 8 year period, working on performance machines and soundtracks led me to attempt building machines for their acoustic qualities, I began imagining entire performances with only sound machines.
Eventually I set out with the intention to pursue this idea machine sound performances. I wanted to have computer control over the motions as a compositional aid and would only use sound that could be generated in the moment and not use recorded or synthesized sound. I called these performances Mechanical Sound Orchestra. I staged performances in the US and Europe for more than a decade. Along the way I did sound installations and some collaborations with other artists. eg Paul Drescher Ensemble and Time's Up! in Austria.