Experimenting with sounds – Magnetoceptia
Recorded in July 2015 in Vienna (AT)
The Omega Birch is a wearable antenna receiver which picks up electromagnetic fields from its surroundings and translate them into audible sound. It is part of a series of costume receivers made for ‘Magnetoceptia’, a collaborative project by Patrizia Ruthensteiner and Dewi de Vree.
Baltic birch is among the most sought-after wood in the manufacture of speaker cabinets. Birch has a natural resonance that peaks in the high and low frequencies, which are also the hardest for speakers to reproduce. This resonance compensates for the roll-off of low and high frequencies in the speakers, and evens the tone. Birch is known for having “natural EQ”.
The project necessitates an involved participation and the object or event under consideration is by necessity considered not as an artefact but in its dynamic production that involves the performer/listener as intersubjectively constituted in perception, while producing the very thing he perceives, and both, the subject and the work thus generated concomitantly, are as transitory as each other.
Magnetoceptia
“Magnetoception: a sense which allows an organism to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude or location.”
Magnetoceptia is a series of performances and installations in which self constructed antenna-based costumes pick up electromagnetic fields and translate them into electronic sounds.
Hazlenut rods bended into the shape of a historical medici ruff, birch antlers, bamboo stems extending towards the skies, or an anachronistic recycled spinning wheel combined with open electronics and coils of copper wire wound into different patterns into the costume, the project is an investigation on different properties of natural and technological materials.
The experienced sound is site specific and depends on the electromagnetic fields that are present on the location. It is modulated by the performers by their positions and movements relative to the space and each other.
The ‘homo superiors’ (Friedrich Nietzsche) gain the ability to grow far beyond their human limitations and evoke a transformation not just physical extension, but also through sound and change of their ‘sound shape’ constantly audibly mirroring their surroundings.
The Spherics Harp is a wearable antenna receiver which picks up electromagnetic fields from its surroundings and makes them perceivable through sound. It is part of a series of wearable receivers made for ‘Magnetoceptia’, a collaborative project by Patrizia Ruthensteiner and Dewi de Vree.
The Spheric Harp is inspired by the ancient Qing Dynasty´s tremendous hairdos and through the length&height of bamboo sticks and strings tensed over a long distance, it has the ability to receive subtile signals from high above the clouds bouncing against the Ionosphere.
The project necessitates an involved participation and the object or event under consideration is by necessity considered not as an artefact but in its dynamic production that involves the performer/listener as intersubjectively constituted in perception, while producing the very thing he perceives, and both, the subject and the work thus generated concomitantly, are as transitory as each other.
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