sound on canvas #2
- 2022
- mixed media on canvas
- single-board microcontroller, 10 piezoelectric speakers, wires, custom software, custom electronics, cable
- 13 x 18 cm
Ten piezoelectric buzzers applied on the canvas are arranged in three staggered rows plus a separate, single element, all driven by an Arduino Nano board.The title seems to mock the traditional formula on canvas and the medium itself as one of the most favored mediums in artistic representation, but it literally brings sound to a canvas by placing many speakers on it and hiding the real heart of the work behind them.The use of a canvas for the purpose of exploiting its strong reference and well-known appearance represents a symbolic attempt to bring sound art to the attention of the widest possible audience, and not only to new media enthusiasts, by modeling this installation as if it were a domestic art piece: a sound ready to be hung on the wall.Considering only the visual aspect, the work looks like a small canvas representing a series of black dots, each with a bright, golden center. When you turn it on the work comes to life by playing sounds of a typically electronic, high- frequency nature, interspersed with partially defined periods of silence.The architecture of the work, which determines the acoustic behavior, is designed according to the typical asymmetric master-slave control model; this is reflected in the arrangement of the speakers on the canvas, which are organized in a group of nine interconnected slaves-elements, driven by a separate master-element outside the group. The miniature speakers are programmed to play only one after the other, so as to avoid noisy or overly lively sound behaviors. The sound events are programmed to be always different by means of random constrained functions applied to the electrical peaks and arbitrary delay lines embedded in the algorithm, resulting in a constantly renewed but homogeneous and uniform acoustic pattern in its macroscopic acoustic character.