The documentation of the first proper outing of the Infinite Spring is here! This was documented during the BV Open Studios event in Bristol, November 2010. Film by John Minton who has done an excellent noir job. I hope to have some high quality sound files available soon.
Also here is some high quality audio from the installation. This was featured as part of Audiograft Jukebox – part of the festival of sound art and contemporary music at Oxford Brookes university.
Below is documentation of the series of experiments that led to Infinite Spring. The spring is suspended by fishing wire and coupled to a piezo transducer. Hitting the spring and listening to the amplified signal from the transducer reveals a number of rich harmonics and sonorities that you would perhaps not expect to find in a discarded piece of scrap metal (unless, of course, like me, you spent your youth suspending oven trays from two pieces of string wrapped around your fingers, sticking your fingers in your ears and knocking the tray against the wall —- try it!!!).
A “prepared” loudspeaker with the cone cut out and a piece of wood glued in the centre knocks against the bottom of the spring to sound it. All that is left to do is send the amplified sound of the spring back to the speaker and the whole thing plays itself rather nicely although you have to get the levels adjusted carefully or it goes a bit mad.
the piezo transducer, spring and speaker from above
The infinite spring #1
Next step is to hear the sound of the infinite spring through another prepared loudspeaker, this time a small foil cup coupled to a speaker cone. The appeal of this is the idea that one material object can be made to “play” another one. If you have ever wondered what it would sound like for a spring to play a foil cup here is your answer:
The infinite spring #2
Next we incorporate a sad discarded metal CD rack (ancient history in the the world of the iPod). In infinite spring #3 you will see both the spring and the CD rack suspended, the spring as before with the loudspeaker hitting it, and the CD rack with a small DC motor hitting it, which is also fed from the audio signal of the spring. The motor is basically behaving like a rotating loudspeaker, an idea i got from the excellent electronic peasant website. Now if you ever wondered what a CD rack sounded like when played by a spring……
The Infinite Spring #3
