The Mungo Scott Silos in Sydney are the site of a current sound and vibration collaboration between Eliot Palmer and Mark Brown. We are working inside the site’s five-storey mill building, which was constructed in 1922 and until recently was still used for flour processing. 

The project focuses on the chutes and platforms that cut through the building’s floors. An array of tactile transducers are used to reveal the dormant acoustic characteristics of these structures. For more go to: http://surfaceresonance.net/places/silos

SILO-PHASE-1-CLEANED-MASTER

The Avoca Project is an international art project in regional Victoria, Australia, centred on the Watford House / the Swiss House – prefabricated in Germany and imported during the gold rush in the 1850s.

The time-worn irregularities and inconstencies of the Swiss House and its companion workshed provide the focal point for a series of vibration and sound experiments.

This is a recording taken in the sunroom of the Avoca house. This employed multiple transducers, and used physical and audio materials from around the site as an improvised response to the resonance of the sunroom. A metal bucket and stones from the garden provided high frequency buzzes to complement the deeper vibrations made from the windows and roofing iron. Recordings made from a sprung metal table were impressed on the window using a small resonator, to play with plosive transients in the loosely framed glass.

http://surfaceresonance.net/places/shed

Avoca-2012-compressed-1

avoca-sunroom-sample

Travel throughout Japan in 2012 was used to explore sites and projects for sound and vibration making.

Small resonating speakers were applied to the wood, paper and glass screen doors and windows of temples and other sites in Uji (Kyoto) and Kamiyacho (Tokyo), and a temple bell  in Hida-Takayama, working with vibration and chain.

This is a sample of source material gathered during this time, which will be incorporated into future works and projects.

Japan metal paper wood glass

A return to Komyogi temple, Kamiyacho (Tokyo). Unprocessed edit of improvisation (cleaned up version of earlier upload).

The sound making was a study of the resonance and rattles in the wooden / paper windows in the temple. I sought to shape sound by focusing on tuning the frequencies of three oscillators, filter frequency and resonance, and intermodulation.

The application was about getting more transient vibrations that were more musical but also more ambiguous in origin - more akin to the rattles that occur with the low frequencies of passing traffic. The focus on low pass filter resonance helped me to draw out this idea, as it somewhat emulates/mimics the physical resonance that occurs acoustically.

A lot of what is heard is the harmonics of some lower tones, played through the paper/wood with vibration speakers. The tuning was based very much on what the paper was sympathetic to and what more pure tones would complement and draw out transient noises from the wood and paper. This approach in turn will support a paper installation work underway with visual artist Larissa Linnell.

I was responding to this boundary of the temple space and how the larger temple complex, and the building itself, were contained and somewhat protected from the activity of Tokyo.  You can hear birds in the graveyard and there was a wonderful stillness late at night during this recording.

This is a quick edit of a 20 minute improvised recording made in March 2013 as part of an artist in residence with 3331 Gallery Chiyoda. Ideally I'd love to come back for a performance installing resonators across the whole site.

Komyogi-temple-2013-EPalmer

Sample of close-mic recording of paper resonance, element of an 8 channel composition played across the surface of the work 'twice transmission' (Larissa Linnell). 

Washi paper, suspended by thread, responded to vibration energy created by vibration speakers. The sounds were tuned to activate the surfaces of the paper and stimulate interaction between the edges of the paper pieces. 

Paper-sample-2

Paper-sample-1

http://surfaceresonance.net


Eliot’s projects include composition for auditory and tactile sensory crossover, and applying low frequency transducers to activate sound from dilapidated or ageing structures. His compositions are grounded in low frequency sound and sympathetic building response to vibration energy – the distortions, rattles and buzzes made from metal, glass and wood.

Eliot Palmer

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