| Sound Installations by Nigel Ayers | ||
| Ecnad Larolf | ||
A multimedia work constructed around a three minute recording of Helston Town Band playing the Floral Dance, which has been digitally time-stretched so that it is more than an hour long. Emanating from artificial grassy knolls , the resulting sound follows a beat that seems closer to the earth breathing, or the cycles of plants, than a traditional processional dance beat. Running continuously in Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro from 17 January till 14 March 2009 |
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| The Desiring Machines | ||
These are interactive machines that produce digital glitch voices in response to arrays of buttons and sensors. These science fiction devices include components drawn from fringe scientific fields such as radionics. The sounds created can be interpreted as music, but they were constructed without musical intention. |
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| Soul Zodiac | ||
A temporal and spatial deconstruction of the Soul Zodiac double LP released in 1972 by the American jazz performer Cannonball Adderley. Using time-stretching (a process where the duration of an audio signal is changed without affecting its pitch) each of the twelve zodiac-themed tracks has been altered from its original running time to a length of one hour and burnt onto a compact disc. For the performance, each compact disc is then played on one of twelve CD players. The twelve CD players in Soul Zodiac are arranged to align with the sequence of zodiac signs they represent. The running time of the piece is precisely one hour. |
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| The Planetarium Must Be Built! | ||
A low-fidelity simulation of one year of ritual walks on the Bodmin Moor Zodiac. The Zodiac is a mythical system which has been created by extensive fieldwork on Bodmin Moor using technology such as GPS satellite data to empirically verify visualised landscape symbols. It is presented in the form of a geodesic dome, containing multiple CD players, each one playing a recording of a ritual walks. Each CD player is placed in a circle on an aerial photograph which maps both the place and time of the walk. Visitors to the installation experience a unique time-based interaction with recorded material. Visual elements such as a DVD slideshow, a kinetic planetarium sculpture lit in ultraviolet light; and removable elements such as books and maps feature in the installation. |
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| Aquarius Suirauqa | ||
A three-minute vinyl recording of a Cornish male voice choir, the Raymon Hill Singers, performing the song "Aquarius" from the musical "Hair", has been subjected to a digital studio process known as time-stretching, in which the duration of the piece is extended whilst preserving the same pitch. The track is now 60 minutes long and has been overdubbed with the same time-strecthed recording playing in reverse. Multiple CD copies of this new recording play constantly on stereo CD players arranged around the gallery, each one starting a few seconds after the other. |
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