Maker Music Festival: drift

drift

Drift explores the boundaries and intersections between control and collapse, dissipation and resonance, reflection and transmission. It is a big self-resonating feedback mirror made from stainless steel driven by an air coupled 4×10″ speaker. The sounds you hear are the intrinsic vibrations of the metal sheet, simply generated by feeding the signals, recorded by a contact microphone, back to the mirror through the speakers. The reflections caused by the mirror’s vibrations visualize the spatial expansion of the structure-born sound and magnify the moment when the stable oscillation breaks down into chaotic noise.

The vibration of the highly polished stainless steel sheet is picked up by a contact pickup and passed onto the amplifier through an effect chain. This stimulates the mirror in its natural oscillation modes. The system swings up. Dynamic intervention by the musician is made possible by providing suitable electronics for the selective amplification of individual frequency bands, modulation of the phase response and tremolo-like amplitude modulation. In addition, the mirror acts as a large-area membrane that interacts with the nature of the room.

I set it up half a day before the first performance. Then when I was there at the exhibition I was in that space for 6 hours playing and experimenting while the audience could attend. there were breaks every 15min because of a performance in the neighboring room where there was a really loud washing machine. I was quite .. mesmerized after that.

Frequently Asked Questions

What inspired you to do this?

It was a book thats analyzing movements of different primitives of membranes. From there on the simple shape and principle behind this thing led to more thoughts of the whole concept.

How long did it take to make it?

longest part was to think about it! the rest was simple maybe 2h of assembly

Have you done other things like this?

Yes. I dismantled a Piano so just the harp is left and integrated similar principle into it. I also did a 3 ton instrument made of railways, which was quite heavy . and not so easy to drive elektronicly. But it was a fun experience and it ended up as a percussive improvised performance on the rails, pickup electronics and electronic bass drums.

What did you wish you knew before you started this?

actually, I was quite surprised and freaked out about the fact that it worked as I expected.

Are there plans available to make this? Do you sell this?

its quite straight forward if you want build it.

What’s next?

it will involve a huge garbage container.

Sebastian Leopold : Soundartist

Im a musician and sound artist based in Vienna. After years of working as an engineer, I settled down to set up a studio where I could focus on building sounding objects and installations. My fascination for vibrating strings, membranes, blocks and blobs shows in my work pieces, which experiment with the eigenfrequencies of bodies and their manipulation through means of electronics. I am looking out for intersections of performing arts and space related influences to find the boundaries of object, subject and ambience. For me it opens up a field of improvisation and interpretation in soundarts. This approach just recently got me involved into acousmatic music and their sound diffusion systems where I work on transforming and composing sounds in software and try to connect this with acoustical structures.

Conceptually, I am influenced by artists like Alvin Lucier, David Tudor, Ellen Fullman and experimental Instrumentbuilders like Bart Hopkin and Yuri Landman