7777 Islands
7777 Islands is where I like to publish some of my personal artistic resarch. An archipelago of spikes and curves
Modale Klangerzeugung, Juley 2025, Galerie mimikri
Ever since I got into transducers, I’ve felt this urge to use them with massive panels. The preset wall you see here is made up of 12 smaller panels on the top and bottom, as well as 7 large ones in the center. The large panels measure 1.85 m × 3 m. Behind every large panel I’ve placed two 40 W transducers running in parallel.
I’ve composed a 20-minute piece in Max, using a bunch of room dimensions as a guide and calculating some of the room’s resonant frequencies. I really liked the idea of “playing” the room. In the beginning this worked quite well. Sadly, after two very loud runs, almost every amplifier channel burned out. I’m still not entirely certain what killed them, but I suspect the infrasound I sent might not have been suitable for these Wondom amps.
For the rest of the exhibition I used an old hi-fi amp I had lying around — but of course, it was only stereo. As of right now, the system is still under repair and will probably be used again in October for the upcoming Range Sound Festival.
Acustic Dispersal, Mai 2025, Karlskirche
So this one was a lot of fun. Here I just lashed a piece of OSB with a paper tube onto a speaker. Put it on wheels, and you have a hyper-directional speaker — at least hyper-directional for everything above the wavelength of the tube’s lowest fundamental. In this case, the tube was about 1.3 m.
Since the Karlskirche is octagonal in shape, my logic was that the resonance of the church would be stronger than in a regular square room, since instead of two walls resonating per frequency you’d have four. I composed a piece using the room modes in FL and PD, running it in playback while I plonked a bit on the Model Cycles, tuned to harmonies of the modes. This way I could play more with the whole “sound cannon” idea.
There was also a sub running — just a normal omnidirectional subwoofer. What I found funny in retrospect was that adding a bunch of harmonies with the Model Cycles made the whole thing sound a lot like an electric organ. Before me, a friend of mine, Sam, performed with the church’s organist — miking up the real organ and adding feedback while messing with the routing.
The performances took place during the second week of Marie’s exhibition. The plastic bowls were part of it.
Motorbox MKII, December 2023
This is the first synth I’ve ever developed. It’s basically a controllable EMF emitter. It’s built from five ULN2003A boards and five corresponding steppers, from which I removed the metal casing and all the mechanical parts, leaving only the coils emitting a pulse wave. Each emitter has a pot that determines the speed of the pulse wave. The amplitude is controlled by the distance to the antenna. This adds a very nice amount of possible expression to the instrument.
If you’re interested in getting one, you can reach out to me via mail.
Contacts:
Allen Homburg
allenhomburg@yahoo.de