Here’s a way to explore new spaces in untraditional manners: a sonophore, or a glove equipped with a tape heads meant to explore spaces with magnetic tape tracing the walls.
This project is a followup to the analogue tape glove from a few years ago. In that project, aligned strips of magnetic tape cover a canvas, leaving anyone wearing the glove to track their hand horizontally swiping across different tracts, or vertically listening to each track.
This project takes a glove similar to the analogue tape glove, but the tape is spread out along the walls of the installation. There’s no way of knowing what strange voices are contained on the tapes; the only way to know is to explore the space.
Video of the project below. It’s a Vimeo, so you know it’s artistic.
I wonder if it’s possible – with a steady hand – to actually make anything out of what one can hear this way. It might be a just a litle bit too artistic ;)
If you’ve never tried manually pulling a tape through a player, I’ll tell you – near impossible :P
Without the capstan mechanism the pitch is just too unstable (we humans are terrible at slow and steady motion), unlike a turntable where the plate has a fair bit of mass, making it very easy.
Yea, grafting a fly-wheel powered toy car to the read finger would help a lot with sound quality. Should still be able to do some nifty pitch bend sound effects and such.
1963 seems so close again =)
https://www.google.nl/search?q=nam+june+paik+audio+tape+wall&espv=2&biw=1233&bih=806&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ekpfVLC2F8veaNeCgLgP&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=oEapshA9GKcAbM%253A%3BnuCZ1yoTmhq2PM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Farts.gov%252Fsites%252Fdefault%252Ffiles%252Fstyles%252Fslide-620×485%252Fpublic%252F5-Paikrandomaccess.jpg%253Fitok%253D7AvOqds6%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Farts.gov%252Fphotos%252Fnam-june-paik-artist-who-invented-video-art%3B620%3B485
It makes me feel like 1963 is even farther away. Same interface but a totally different artistic spirit. I’m also reminded of Laurie Anderson’s tape bow violin. Stellar imaginations on these two. http://www.cca.org/blog/20110831-Laurie-Anderson.shtml
so as long as we are being needlessly artistic and useless, why not put a vinyl strip on the wall and put grooves in it? have people walk around with special globes with needles for readings?
Or put a CD on wall and put a IR laser and laser pickup in glove. The CD would be stationary and you would run your finger around it. Since the CD is digital and not analog the audio will be clearer if you run your finger in a spiral toward the hub.
I LIKE IT! You wouldn’t even have to come in contact with the surface. even do it on a window with achievements for the greatest distance from the windows surface.
How about have the tape move across the wall by a pulley and take up reel? It would either be endless loop or automatic rewind and play at end of tape. The tape would move at a set rate eliminating the wow and flutter of just the glove moving. You could put your gloved finger at any point on the tape (not touching it or put tape under some lexan plastic) and listen to the tape without too much distortion. A two-track stereo tape would really be interesting if two different audio sources was recorded.
Magnetic sensor such as the HMC5843 might work.
Or just mix ferric oxide into paint, paint the walls, lay down audio tracks with a record head glove in a random matter and let people hunt the walls for audio.
Hellyeah.. Or paint the floor and put pickups on roller-blades or skateboards.
Or better yet record it to cables on a zip line course and have the pickup on the pulley.
Imagine if you set it up so people could not only read from the tape, but write to it as well. It would be basically impossible to keep steady to even write to it in such a way that it could be read from, but still.