Skeletons

Skeletons is a series of pieces in which the movements of a number of automata are transduced and made audible. Revealing a shadow audio image of their actions, Skeletons transforms each presence of the automata into a sounding ghost of itself. By using ultrasound as the means of transduction, these works bring into hearing range the normally inaudible artifacts of physical movement, thus allowing a sonic depiction of a common but silent taxonomy of real motion in real space.

A magnetic spinning top performs a persistent pirouette in Our Lady, producing an unladylike aural image of its movement as it turns. Under scrutiny from the ultrasound sensors, the spinning top appears to execute the scientific grail of perpetual motion. Referring to the idiosyncratic methods of investigation and knowledge harvesting that science employs, Our Lady presents a real sounding image of an actual physical illusion.

Nocturne and Chain are centered around slightly distressed music box versions of Brahms' "Lullaby" and the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" respectively. The boxes have been altered so that only fragments of the melodies play: some notes are heard normally, others as dull thunks, and still others not at all. As they play, the sensors pick up the mechanical motions of the springs, gearing, and tines, thus complementing the acoustic melodies of the music with an audible image of the mechanisms used to produce them and describing skewed images of tranquillity and desire.

In Junior's Farm, small and lethargic electric motors drive glacially-paced music box versions of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco," "Feelings," and "Love Me Tender" simultaneously. Here the mechanical sound of the motors counterbalances the occasional music box note to produce a musical trio sans musicality. Looking something like a porcine choir and deployed across a nautical chart of the Bay Area, the devices allude to the soundings used to map the ocean floor and the slow glide of tectonic movement beneath it.

In H/Z, three small electric fans suspended above a set of sensors and a large upturned speaker periodically vary their rotating speeds, producing sounds disproportionate to their size as they spin. Taking its title from the "heroes or zeroes" maxim and the technical term for cycles per second, Hertz (or Hz), the piece trades in the production of big effects from not-so-big actions and the heroics implied by such an operating method. Arranged in an inverted version of the winners podium in which a victor is flanked by two runners-up, the fans hang poised in a precision flying formation that asserts a competitive presence as it points downward. Found here then is an echo of the image of Japanese Zero pilots on noble and suicidal missions rushing headlong into the sound of their own fury.