Hi and thanks for coming along to listen to this presentation.
I’m Paul Dunham and this presentation is a brief overview of a series of sound installations
called Click::RAND.
I’d like to provide a brief background context, the concept behind the works and how the works
can be adapted to a range of installation locations.
The use of probabilistic methods and pseudo-random number generators is common across a wide
range of experimental music and sound art.
Such a non-deterministic approach in electromechanical sound art can be a way of exploring the agency
and behaviour of objects through their non-linear sounding or unpredictable material behaviours.
Click::RAND has been conceptualised as the sonic articulation of The RAND Corporation’s
1955 book A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates.
Utilising random numbers to actuate a series of electro-mechanical relays, Click::RAND
uses a somewhat non-deterministic approach to explore the material behaviours of those relays
Within a media archaeological context, the work draws lines between the book as an example
of the publication of large random number sets and early electromechanical and electronic
computers that were not capable of processing true random number sets due to their lack
of processing and storage capabilities, the programmatic capabilities and an element of
unreliability.
Using a publicly available dataset of the book’s random digit and normal deviate tables,
Click::RAND is a series of works that explores the inherent patterns and rhythm’s that
may exist within this data.
The first in a series of works simply uses each digit to actuate a corresponding relay,
that is, 0-9 in a linear, and somewhat conventional, form.
As such, the work shown in the following video is minimalist in concept with a focus on the
inherent material characteristics and nuances of each relay which, visually, appear to be identical
With such a rich set of data I saw there was an opportunity to explore and exploit this
by developing and expanding Click::RAND into a series of works.
Not only has the use of the data sets be reconceptualised but the physical form of the work has been
redeveloped as a series of, what I’m calling, configurable sound blocks.
Using the circuit board as a canvas, the form of each sound block is analogous to one 5x5
block of digits.
A brief example is shown onscreen.
The use of these sound blocks provides the ability to adapt an installation to the acoustic
characteristics of different installation spaces.
As these works are based on exploring the inherent rhythmic patterns of the underlaying
data, some form of notation needs to be expressed through the material object for these patterns
to come into existence.
Transforming the symbolic representation of the book from the textual to the digital realm
as a series of zeros and ones, or in a music context, rests and notes, provides a form of notation that can be
expressed through the relays as layers of rhythmic clicks.
A sound somewhat analogous to the rhythmic and noisy clattering of early electromechanical computers
You may have noticed that the number of columns from the book and the columns on the sound
block differed.
Each number is represented as four binary bits, hence four relays.
I’ll briefly outline two compositional forms of the work.
The first form is a linear reading of the 1M digits by a single sound block.
Each row in each block of numbers is replayed in parallel as individual digits in binary form
In this way, an audience can audio-visually experience the emergent patterns and rhythms
within these sequences.
By reading each row of digits in parallel the emergence of polyrhythms may also be heard.
This compositional form uses a fixed tempo when replaying the binary digits.
As such, the installation takes approximately two days to read the book in this form.
Interpreting the book instructions for the use of the tables provides another compositional form
Rather than use a fixed tempo, the normal deviates provide a temporal element that introduces
a disruptive presence to the regularity of binary systems.
Doing so is an attempt to shift the audience attention between the macro- and micro-levels
of the sound; between those emergent and ebbing patterns of the work as a whole until interrupted,
and to the individual sounds of the relays.
Using sound blocks allows for the work to be iterated as a way of increasing the density
of sound and the iterative possibilities of more rhythmic forms.
Adding sound blocks in different configurations allows an installation to be adapted to the
installation space.
For example, a linear row of sound blocks in one instance or a spatialised installation
installing sound blocks across a number of walls or spaces.
A brief example is shown onscreen.
To conclude, appropriating the relay and presenting it in this way as a sound installation provides
a new interface through which a book of random numbers can be interpreted.
From a media archaeological perspective, the work utilises two different media artefacts
that are related through a history of computation.
That concludes my presentation.Thank you. We can now take questions.