Tactile Noise Workshop
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Build your own Tactile Noise Instrument with André Castro! The tactile noise instruments are based on small integrated-circuits (op-amps), usually employed as amplifiers, that do not produce sound on their own, except when integrated into a recursive network (its output is connected to its input). For the recursive network to be activated and sound to be produced, is necessary the intervention of a body that touches and connects the circuit’s vital nodes, its contact points. When the body touches these points it acts as a resistance, becoming part of the circuit’s electrical flux, and changing the produced sound as a result of its positions, humidity and pressure exerted over the instrument’s contact-points. Such configuration makes these instruments, despite their simplicity, very amusing and challenging to play, a sort of a sonic puzzle, with which the player has to relate in order take control over its sounds. André Castro: “With this workshop is my hope to contribute to the demystification of electronics, as well as encourage a DIY approach to instruments’ making. In the present moment, in which we live surrounded by technology, and this plays a vital role in our lives, it seems awkward that often we are clueless about how must technology works, how it is composed and how it can be repurposed for creative means. If in our own artistic practice we employ technology, and want to explore its potential, and be aware of its implications, it becomes necessary to understand it, rather than letting it take possession of our work. As referred by Kristina Andersen: “By using our crude and clumsy hands to make aspects of computational machinery we are re-inserting ourselves into a process that we are otherwise excluded from”. Date: Saturday 26 May 2012 |