Circuits from Soft Frequencies (2023)

4 channel audio installation, 4 speakers, Arduino Nanos, cables, cymbals, fabric, lamps, MOSFETs, motors, PiR sensors, resistors, solenoids, soundscape, timber, 19 mins

Circuits from Soft Frequencies examines the materiality of sound and how it affects bodies, things and spaces. Comprising four readymade speakers, the installation at the core of the work moves sounds through space and around the audience, creating an eerie and unpredictable soundscape through the use of reverberation and panning. The sounds originated as samples from devices used to organise time in different cultural spaces, for example the clock, bell and gong. 

Samples were also collected by Lee during fieldwork to sites featuring huge, concrete ‘sound mirrors’, an archaic technology designed to ‘sense’ the sonic vibrations of aircraft in wartime before the invention of radar. The composition itself is based on a terrain, where tracks as characters demonstrate their attributes from how they move around, whether they stay in one place, or move to different speakers as long drones or quick bounces. 

The installation also comprises fabricated ‘cymbal speakers’. Taking their dimensions from the readymade speakers, these structures are triggered by changes in the environment, through the use of sensors, motors and microcontrollers. The audience is invited to disrupt the soundscape through exploration and gesture.

Credits:

‘Alto Gong, Metal Hit, B (H6 XY)’ by InspectorJ

‘Ambience, Machine Factory, A’ by InspectorJ

‘Clock’ by Tetrisrocker

‘Clock ticking’ by Mortifreshman

‘Gong Multiple Slow Beats’ by easy_thunder

‘Rolling baoding balls’ by grault

Jamie Lee‘s current research looks at the physical properties of places and how their materiality affects the body and the ethereal. ’Printing the Space’, his socially engaged project working with the public to create an installation took part in Bristol City Hall. 

Jamie’s still work has been published in Art Licks Magazine and his video work screened at Plymouth Art Weekender and Sheffield Doc Fest. He was part of East Bristol Contemporary’s Day School programme ’22 and is currently an Associate of Open School East 2022-2023. Jamie is also co-producer of ‘A Forest of Things’, a collective of artists and researchers that use Arduino microcontrollers to create sensing artworks, as a way of collectively thinking around ecological and human networks. 
https://linktr.ee/jamielaurencelee