sonic generator

sonic event generator for gallery wall

constructed from reworked post-consumer waste materials – plastic, cardboard, aluminium – the work is activated when a visitor drops a quandong nut into the top-most channel…

the nut sonifies the various materials as it travels quickly on its gravity-assisted journey to the lowest receptacle…

the piece is an analogue sequencer that, while repetitive of the same sequence, is each time slightly variant depending on initial conditions and the momentary physics of the nut’s encounters with materials along the way…

quandong – the nut is sourced from santalum acuminatum, a small hemi-parasitic tree endemic to australia’s arid interior ecologies – the fruit of the tree is a hard woody nut surrounded by a thin fleshy membrane, high in amino acids and trace vitamins it’s good eating for humans and animals such as the wandering emu that spread the unbroken though acid-effected and scratched by crop-stones nut in their scats – the nut’s journey through the birds body, and the pile of fertiliser it ends up in, are key to the trees germination and distribution…

the woody marble-like nut works well for sounding because of its gyrified surface texture – a smooth-surfaced marble makes less sound, mainly just the percussive strike when dropping from one material to another, while the quandong nut sounds as it rolls as well…

gary warner december 2020