This program presents three soundscapes I generated to accompany the exhibition of an 8m long drawing work that I made during a residency at Stacks Projects - an artist-run gallery space in Potts Point, Sydney.
The soundscapes are constructed from recordings of simple autonomous kinetic drawing apparatus that were set up and left to operate for extended periods of time without intervention. Each apparatus is a unique combination of modified turntable, found objects, rods, cables, and pens, in an assemblage suspended from a camera tripod. Over the week-long residency, 50 independent drawings were generated on a long roll of heavyweight drawing paper gradually unfurled on the floor.
The making of each drawing generated rhythmic patterns of sound that I captured with a digital audio recorder placed near each developing drawing at floor level. The sounds were manipulated by layering, time shifting, EQ and other simple effects, to produce three collections of six minute tracks that were replayed in the gallery from three spatially separated speakers. Each sequence had varying periods of silence between tracks - a compositional strategy to ensure modulation of the soundscape dynamics in the exhibition space.
These sounds derived from production of the drawings, infuse the exhibition space with an unusual musicality intended to inflect the viewers reception of the exhibited ‘ecology of aleatoric drawings’ - the 8m long sheet having been lifted from the floor and hung on the wall.
