“Material Sequencer”
Title:
- Material Sequencer
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Artist Statement:
“Material Sequencer” is an 8-step electromechanical sequencer, designed to emphasise the physical materiality of sound and sound production. The simple USB-powered interactive sound-sculpture re-investigates one of the most elemental tools of electronic music production –– an 8-step rhythmic sequence, by taking the sequencing process outside the black box and into the acoustic realm, flaunting its materiality and physicality. All the interface components are presented on a custom-designed circuit board that is fully exposed, and the sound-generating mechanism is reduced to solenoid percussion in its most basic form. Different rhythmic patterns can be entered using a small 8-position DIP switch and an on-board dial can be used to change the tempo. Using a microcontroller, the patterns are converted into a series of electrical impulses that are then used to actuate the solenoid, which in turn strikes a block of solid matter, generating sound.
This project stems from a body of work concerned with sonic transcoding of brutalism. My interest in brutalism – an architectural movement that originated in a drive for material honesty – dates back to my upbringing in Ekbatan: a concrete megastructure residential complex in Tehran. During my PhD research, I employed brutalism as a frame of reference for sound-based art practices that embrace the materiality of their conventionally ‘anti-beautiful’ raw materials through a highly organised mode of expression. A bare-bones realisation of this sound-based brutalism, “Material Sequencer” presents an upfront celebration of its austere sonic and physical material. The project is a response to the over-philosophised discourse on sonic materialism which almost ironically overleaps the very essence of what it is concerned with, i.e. matter. To counter this, Material Sequencer underscores the very physicality and tactility of the sound object and the technological medium that enables it. In this way, this work presents a contra-Schaefferian approach towards l’objet sonore.
