DEVELOPING THE EMOTION ORGAN VIA COLLABORATION (AND VICE VERSA!)
MAY 2006
Participating in collaborative artworks acts as a vehicle for testing notions and systems for The Emotion Organ - and to get repsonse both from colleagues and the public. The installation "In Death Valley ...." is the last collaborative work i will participate in in my fellowship period, and also involves the greatest direct results of the work I have invested in The Emotion Organ.
This is probably best described by the images below (clicking on images will open larger versions in a new window):
The image above was made with the help of visual artist Ketil Nergaard, and is an attempt to visualize the physical appearance of The Emotion Organ. The two stands on each side of the organ are reproduction phonograph horns, that shall be mounted on gooseneck microphone stands soldered onto steel tubes. There are 3 horns on each side of the organ. 2 of the horns are intended to emit electro acoustic sound (modified sound of the organ) via small speakers installed inside the horns. My current plan is to install a coloured lamp inside the 3rd horn. The position of each of the horns can be adjusted by the player. This system was the main inspiration for the construction of the "sound flower" in the Death Valley installation.
In this version the 6 horns were mounted together on a rotating motor (the rotation system is designed by Per Platou, and the flower was constructed by Aslak Nygren). A dvd surround system was used for sound output, and 4 stereo sound tracks were distributed to 4 of the horns, with small speakers installed inside of them.
The dvd surround sound system was a last-minute solution, as the small speakers I had originally intended on using produced too little volume once they were placed inside the horns. One drawback of the current system is that the dvd surround sound speakers are too heavy to be supported by the gooseneck components, and extra supports had to be used. Also, the dvd system is not designed for live sound input - a reqiúirement of the system for The Emotion Organ. Otherwise, the sound quality produced by the speakers inside the tin horns was just what I have envisaged for the electro acoustic sound of the organ. It is, an the material of the horns "tinny" and seems to come from a past time.
So delighted to see some of my ideas materialise in concrete forms, I considered for a while retaining the rotating sound flower as part of the organ, rather than using 2-stand model I had initially envisaged. But I eventually decided to keep to my original plan, which will unfortunately mean removing the horns from the flower and building the stands from scratch.
OTHER ELEMENTS:
AUDIO CONTENT
The actual audio material consisted of recordings of desert sounds in Death Valley and a beautiful sound work adapted by Geir Jenssen/Biosphere which features on his latest album. It reminded me of Speilberg's sound track to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when the spaceship attempts to communicate with earthlings - only much more poignant.
LAMPS
Three lamps were controlled by a Max patch that created undulating light shifts - contributing to changing the atmosphere in the room .....
.... and throwing colour onto the phonograph horns.
For this installation I adapted the Max patch I used for a previous collaborative work - namely Ikon (December 2005) - with the help of Håkon Lindbäck and HC Gilje.
AROMA
If you click on the image above you will see more clearly the aroma dispenser - it basically heats up aroma stored in a cup. The temperature of the oil heater determines the strength of the aroma. The aroma we used for the installation is the synthetic smell of an Egyptian mummy designed by Frank Knight of Dale Air Aroma Design. One advantage that this aroma dispensing system has over the method that I will use in The Emotion Organ is that heating the aroma oil rather than spraying it directly into the air gives a mush richer aromatic quality to the olfactory experience. However, as it takes a while to heat up and cool down the oil, it is not as immediately controllable as my system of airbrushes. So this is one case of having to compromise on quality for the sake of functionability.
PROJECTED IMAGERY
I modified video footage that I had previously filmed in Deat Valley, California - mainly of desert bloom, but also panoramic footage of the desert which was projected onto a rotating mirror ball in the installation. The sound from the video recordings was also sent to one of the horns of the sound flower. The video maerial was edited to create differnt lightscapes that should, in combination with the changing lights of the installation, give a feeling of the passing of time - moving from light to dark, sunrise to sunset, etc. Addtionally, I rotated some of the video material to emphasise the other rotational elements in the space.
MIRROR BALL
I covered a mirror ball with broken peices of a mirror to fragment and disperse the video material as the ball rotated in the same direction as the sound flower. The idea was to make it look something like a beautiful but somewhat dangerous/threatening flower-like sun.
WHAT THE BODY DOES
There was 2 tons of salt on the floor of the installation, inspired by a visit to Badwater, a salt lake in Death Valley. The impulse to touch the salt proved irresistable to most visitors - as it did in Death Valley.
I filmed this little man as he tried to map his body onto the shadow of the rotating sound flower. He then tried to catch the projected imagery as it moved around the space. Some other responses:
- standing and sitting down for a while (medative)
- standing close to the sound flower to listen to the sounds
- a couple of people felt nauseous because of the rotation of the two moving
objects, coupled with the intense aroma
- many people commented that they experienced smell of the "salt"
as being intoxicating - simultaneously pleasant and unpleasant.
SYNAESTHETIC?
In relation to the reactions and comments that we received, I think that this installation did managed to transmit sensations to the public. One person described it as entering a virtual world that they didn't want to leave. Sensuous, medative, abstract, evoking memories, emotional, calming, disturbing, melancholic, alternative reality - were other terms. Though the correlations of the various media were not formally worked out, and in most cases, not directly mapped onto each other, but occurred randomly was not commented on by anybody - so I suspect that they didn't even think about it. I would prefer to describe this meeting of elements as "serendipitous encounters". What I am satisfied with is that the attention to choice of material/media and to designing an emotional landscape seemed to have an impact on bringing everything together.
The title of the work: "IN DEATH VALLEY, EVERYWHERE WE LOOKED, GENTLY WAVING STANDS OF GOLDEN DESERT BLOSSOMS DANCED IN THE WIND, THEIR DAISY-LIKE FACES PUNCTUATED WITH VIBRANT ORANGE CENTRES" was actually found in a newspaper article written by someone who had visited Death Valley a year before us. I think the title itself is pretty synaesthetic, and I think it influenced the way we approached the task of making the installation - both when we experienced Death Valley ourselves and harvested audio/visual material - and the way we approached the task of making the installation. Somehow it was as if our task was to mediate the former visitors' own experience.
Of course, this is just speculation on my part - but what else does an art work of this nature really have to go on to say how and why it seems to be successful?