Garden of Signals expands upon the use of audio feedback in earlier sound works, forming an autonomous sonic artwork that uses feedback as a sound material and as a process.
Like pieces such as Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968), and Microphone by David Tudor (1973), or the later work of Agostino Di Scipio, Garden of Signals is born from material possibilities at the heart of sound reproduction.
Garden of Signals was initiated with an interest in remote signals, such as mobile telephones, and how they affect the movement of human bodies in physical space when we respond to them. The pervasive multitude of distant signals appears to be a random and invisible process, but has a tangible influence on the domain of the flesh.
The loudness of the feedback coming from each of the 6 speakers is measured, and then influences the movement of each guitar pickup, which further changes the fluctuating loudness of the feedback coming out of the speakers.
In this way, the collective relationship between the sound from the speakers and the movement of the guitar pickups creates continuously shifting patterns of sound. Garden of Signals was realised within the framework of the 2012 Artist-in-residence Program of the Gas Natural Fenosa Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, and subsequently exhibited at the Sonic Arts Award in Rome.
Guitar pickups, speakers, motors, purpose-built code. October/November 2013.
Camera by Juan Lesta: esferobite.com/dsk/