“V Construction” – a real-time sound sculpture by duo Siedl/Cao is featured at Sonic Darts radio show. The show will be broadcast on Resonance FM at 10pm (UK time) on Monday 5th March and repeated at 5am on Friday 9th March. You can listen online here:
“V construction” is a sound sculpture in real time and an integrated performance-installation of which the making process is also the sound performance. The piece starts out by slowly and gradually pulling off tape from a roll, creating a crackling, almost electronic sound, accompanied by clarinet vibrations and microtonal trills. In the next step the tape is used to attach small vibrating sextoys to a microphone stand that itself is miked with a contact microphone. Multiple sextoys create a stochastic rhythm by bouncing off the microphone stand. The performers then use single coil pick-ups to translate the invisible electro-magnetic field of the vibrators into the audible domain.
The piece ends by gradually turning off the vibrators one by one.
This piece is a tribute to Siegmund Freud´s theory of sublimation in which he describes the process of unconsciously deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being „an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an “important” part in civilized life“. #1
#1 „Civilization and Its Discontents“ (german: „Das Unbehagen in der Natur“) 1930
Duo Siedl/Cao 