Thursday 6th December
This morning I took full advantage of the rain: I attached a contact mic to the old metal lamp I found in the photography studio and put it outside to collect the sound of the raindrops. It did resonate a bit anyway, so you could hear the raindrops without amplification, but the recording has picked up some particularly high, crisp, almost electrical elements. Like the birdseed piece I did, it is a very percussive sound which I wouldn’t normally choose to create when ‘playing’ an object. I like the simple illustration of chaos theory in generating sound; setting up the structure and leaving the content to chance.
I have borrowed a signal generator from the physics department. It emits a sine tone which I can vary. When the students have left this afternoon I will take it down to the white stairwell to see if I can determine the resonant frequency of the space. If so, I might make an installation using that frequency and its harmonics, so that the architecture is directly influencing the sound content and behaviour. Site-specific art for purists… I’ve tested it out in the studio, using a rudimentary oscilloscope (the record volume bar on my minidisc recorder!), and the studio appears to have a resonant frequency of 400Hz. I expect the stairwell to be much lower because you can hear male voices better than female ones.
