The Rubik’s Contraption
“That was a Rubik’s cube being solved in 0.38 seconds. The time is from the moment the keypress is registered on the computer, to when the last face is flipped. It includes image capture and computation time, as well as actually moving the cube. The motion time is ~335 ms, and the remaining time image acquisition and computation. For reference, the current world record is/was 0.637 seconds. The machine can definitely go faster, but the tuning process is really time consuming since debugging needs to be done with the high speed camera, and mistakes often break the cube or blow up FETs. Looking at the high-speed video, each 90 degree move takes ~10 ms, but the machine is actually only doing a move every ~15 ms. For the time being, Jared and I have both lost interest in playing the tuning game, but we might come back to it eventually and shave off another 100 ms or so.” Ben Katz

FREQUENCIES (A)
Sound performance combining the sound of mechanically triggered tuning forks with pure digital soundwaves. The performer is triggering sequences from the computer, activating solenoides that hits the tuning forks with high precision. Streams of light burst in synchronicity with the forks, creating a not quite minimal sound and light composition.

Cellogram
composed by James Tenney
performed by Ashley Walters – cello
James Tenney made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation.

МАРИ ШУИНАР
Soft virtuosity, still humid, on the edge
“My source has always been the body itself, and especially the silence and the breath which make up the “invisible” stuff of life. At the root of each new work there is always what I call the “mystery”, an unknown wavelength that calls out to me in an almost obsessive manner. My work consists of capturing this primordial wavelength, of “tuning” it in a sense, and of arranging it in space and time with a structure and form proper to it. Since 1978, this is what I have been doing: listening attentively to the vital pulsation of the body to the point of crystallising it in a new order. Each time, I start afresh from zero. Each time, I focus and re-direct my “antennae[…]”

483 Lines
The artwork 483 lines magnifies this analogue video picture until it is 16 meters wide, and then folds this image several times so that it fits vertically into the gallery space, therein adding oscillations of depth into the image which can be activated by ‘tuning’ the projected video to match these waves. The strictly arranged lines can be illusionary, creating a confusing architecture of horizons, whilst the video played through it displays a parallel past, present and future.

The Harmonic Series

File Festival

Created by Manuela Donoso and Luisa Pereira, The Harmonic Series is a collection of mechanical devices , software, sculptures and prints that explore the relationship between musical and visual harmony.Inspired by the nineteenth century mathematician Jules Lissajous who invented a device to visualize sound vibrations using two tuning forks and a beam of light reflected from one mirror to the next to a screen, Manuela and Luisa have re-created and extended this experiment using recent tools. An electronic version of the device replaces the tuning forks with microphones and speakers, allowing people to sing different musical intervals, and contrast the resulting figures with the more chaotic ones generated by percussive sounds. An application plays groups of three notes and plots 3d Lissajous figures for their frequency ratios. The frequency ratios for major, minor and diminished chords are 4:5:6, 10:12:15 and 20:24:29 respectively. These chords were plotted using the app, and then printed as posters and sculptures that reveal a tight relationship between aural and visual harmony.