Posts tagged resonance

OrganOOn is a great site-specific sound installation. 

For Electrified02, [Roberta Gigante] decided to ‘hack’ the harbour of Ghent with a sound installation that turned twelve rusty, gigantic metal pipes stored there into didgeridoo-like sound cylinders.

I’m big fan of turning environmental features into musical instruments. This reminds me a bit of those public organs that make sound from tidal motion.

(via we make money not art)

Breaking glass with sound! (A little more scientific than Memorex, courtesy of MIT.)

Rubbing the rim of a wine glass with a wet finger will cause it to resonate at its resonant frequency. The glass is placed in front of a speaker playing a sine wave, created by the function generator, of this same frequency. When the amplitude is turned up, we can see by shining a strobe light at the glass that this resonant frequency causes it to oscillate. When the glass becomes too stressed, it will shatter, which we see very clearly on high speed video. 

(via MIT TechTV)

This is a pretty sculpture, although I wish there was a way to make the strings more immediately responsive. (Would be tough though, given that they have to spin up first.) The description, from YouTube, from Rhizome:

“Visions of the Amen” is an interactive kinetic sculpture by Mitchell F Chan. The piece is brought to life by the voice of talented young soprano Ashleigh Semkiw, performing in this video Messiaen’s Poemes Pour Mi. The primary elements of the sculpture are 16 strings, weighed down on one end by brass bars and attached at the other end to motors, spin at various speeds to sweep out those ghostly sine-wave forms, and pull up and down on the brass rods. The resultant visual effect, overall, looks something like 16 brass rods dancing, bobbing up and down in a forest of ghostly columns.

Each string in the arrangement is activated by a different note, and spins with a velocity dependent on the volume of that note. So each song and unique delivery creates a different ballet. The microphone feeds into a software that I wrote in Processing, which does some pitch and volume analysis, and then exports PWM values for all the motors via serial protocol to a set of microcontrollers.

(via Rhizome)

I had no idea that Harry Bertoia (he of the diamond chair) was also a sculptor, and even less of an idea that he was a sound sculptor. The picture above is of one of his sculptures—imagine running your hand over the top and the metal reeds shimmering against each other. Follow the via link below to hear some sound clips (and you should really watch the video at the end of that post; the tone out of this thing is gorgeous). (via THIS IS WEIRD VIBRATIONS)

I had no idea that Harry Bertoia (he of the diamond chair) was also a sculptor, and even less of an idea that he was a sound sculptor. The picture above is of one of his sculptures—imagine running your hand over the top and the metal reeds shimmering against each other. Follow the via link below to hear some sound clips (and you should really watch the video at the end of that post; the tone out of this thing is gorgeous).

(via THIS IS WEIRD VIBRATIONS)

More things to do on my inevitable trip out to western Massachusetts: As traffic passes by, its noise generates a sympathetic resonance in the columns of air inside the tubes. High-pitched sirens and even voices generate higher harmonics, while the low rumble of trucks creates low ones. The sound is carried from the microphones in the tubes to a control room, where the sound signal is then amplified and transmitted to the concrete cube speakers under the bridge. There are no electronic effects added. The sounds have been simply extracted from the traffic noise above, as one might extract precious metal from a baser substance. You can hear a sound clip here, or see a short video at the “harmonic bridge” link at the bottom of this page. (via MASS MoCA)

More things to do on my inevitable trip out to western Massachusetts:

As traffic passes by, its noise generates a sympathetic resonance in the columns of air inside the tubes. High-pitched sirens and even voices generate higher harmonics, while the low rumble of trucks creates low ones. The sound is carried from the microphones in the tubes to a control room, where the sound signal is then amplified and transmitted to the concrete cube speakers under the bridge. There are no electronic effects added. The sounds have been simply extracted from the traffic noise above, as one might extract precious metal from a baser substance.

You can hear a sound clip here, or see a short video at the “harmonic bridge” link at the bottom of this page.

(via MASS MoCA)

I love these projects that visualize auditory vibrations, probably because they tend to stretch just beyond my understanding of the physics involved. The sublime!

(via Everyday Listening)

The Singing, Ringing Tree:

Commisioned by a forward thinking Burnley Council, The collection of tubes makes the strangest sounds when the wind blows, which is often round the location at Crown Point, on the moorland overlooking Burnley.
I am a big fan of efforts to define “instrument” in a way that is expansive enough to include consumer music playback devices. Ethan Hein does it in this blog post, in a way that is totally unlike how I think of it, but still fascinating: There are a lot of different musical instruments out there. Just about all of them share four basic components: an oscillator, a source of noise, some kind of modulation, and a resonator. For the curious, my definition has more to do with the relationship between players and machinery that produces predefined groups of frequencies, and is introduced somewhere in my undergrad thesis [pdf link]. (via Ethan Hein’s metablog)

I am a big fan of efforts to define “instrument” in a way that is expansive enough to include consumer music playback devices.

Ethan Hein does it in this blog post, in a way that is totally unlike how I think of it, but still fascinating:

There are a lot of different musical instruments out there. Just about all of them share four basic components: an oscillator, a source of noise, some kind of modulation, and a resonator.

For the curious, my definition has more to do with the relationship between players and machinery that produces predefined groups of frequencies, and is introduced somewhere in my undergrad thesis [pdf link].

(via Ethan Hein’s metablog)

Ringing Rocks Park, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Ringing Rocks Park is a 128 acre park nestled in the woods in Upper Black Eddy. Located within the park is a field of boulders, about 7-8 acres in size, that have an unusual property. When the rocks are struck with a hammer or another rock, they sound as if they are metal and hollow and ring with a sound similar to a metal pipe being struck.
(via Atlas Obscura, follow link above for video/audio samples)

“I wired the gallery with 13 microphones, each set in a resonating tube tuned to a note of the diatonic scale. The viewer would put on headphones and play a tune on an antique keyboard, in which each note was made of filtered sound from elsewhere in the gallery.” (via moonmilk)

“I wired the gallery with 13 microphones, each set in a resonating tube tuned to a note of the diatonic scale. The viewer would put on headphones and play a tune on an antique keyboard, in which each note was made of filtered sound from elsewhere in the gallery.”

(via moonmilk)