W4 - Materials and Methods

Materials:
Recyclable and non-recyclable plastics (cut) and papers (shredded and torn)


Reclaimed materials: trimmings from rolls of self-adhesive high density foam, dust filters, polysterene cladding, furniture fibre filling, heavy-duty plastic, carpet


7 Pine rafters (2m x 1 cm x 3cm)
2 chipboard walls
Staples
Gaffer Tape
Nails


1 bottle
MP3 player-recorder and mini-speakers
Audacity software



VIDEO: Meet My Bin



Methods:

CUBE:

Side walls created by adjusting 2 2x2m chipboard walls to 2m apart.

Back wall formed by window, bottom wall by concrete floor of studio.

Roof created from 7 Rafters - pre-drilled, spaced at 40cm and nailed to upper edge of chipboard walls.

Plastics - 3 bags - washed, cut and stuck to chipboard walls with self-adhesive foam

Torn newspaper - 1 bag, hung from rafters in curtains of different length

Polystrene and furniture fibre laid on rafters for sound insulation

Black plastic (6m x 2m) laid over cube, edges stapled and covered in gaffer tape to eliminate light. Front edge weighted down with rafter off-cuts.

Shredded papers - 12 bags - scattered on concrete floor of studio.


This should create a 2x2x2m cube in total darkness with a significantly different accoustic (muffled and oppressive) to the surrounding studio and which can be experienced by touch, sound and smell.


SOUND INSTALLATION:
Take one bottle from recycling and fill it with water.

Place MP3 recorder on the hollow wooden floor in the centre of a church hall

Place the bottle at a distance from the recorder and hit five times with a metal spoon.

Pour out 2 cm of water and repeat until the bottle is empty. Removing water raises the pitch.

Edit sound file in Audacity to create a 1 minute loopable installation.

Load back onto MP3 recorder and connect mini-speakers.

Play in cube.


Sound manipulation:
I removed non-impact sounds and linked sequences with silence. I then replicated the track three times and edited each track in different ways: repeated sounds, changed pitch, added bass, reversed sounds, added echo, fade in and out. Finally, I added different lengths of silence at the start of the track to complicate the rhythms.

Installed in the cube the resulting sound is intended to be at odds with the muffled insulated cube, at once reverbant but also oppressive.