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Mineral Machine Music :: 1080P :: One Channel Video Installation :: 9min :: 2014
Project Synopsis
An audio visual collaboration between geologist Clement Fay and media artist Mitch Goodwin. Mineral Machine Music is a collaborative exploration of the fabric of the earth as seen from the stage of a microscope and the lens of the industrialized city. The work juxtaposes the man made structural textures of the New York cityscape with the geological mineral formations from the South Australian outback. Blending cityscape with substrate Fay & Goodwin compliment the imagery with layers of sonic noise – musical representations of tectonic activity, echoes of the universe from deep space and the groans of the restless earth all juxtaposed against the industrial machine ambiance of a New York City subway.
Mineral Machine Music has toured widely and has been nominated for numerous international film and media art awards including the MADATAC06 video art award in Madrid and the prestigious Lumen Digital Arts Prize in Cardiff which is recognised by the The Guardian as the “”The world’s pre-eminent digital art prize”. In 2015 Mineral Machine Music was selected for the 16th WRO Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland for the European Union’s 2015 City of Culture program and was one of only thirteen works selected internationally for the IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) VISAP16 Exhibition and Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
Exhibition History
IEEE VIS 2016, Baltimore, Maryland
16th WRO Media Arts Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland
Lumen Digital Arts Prize tour of Athens, New York, London, Tokyo and Cardiff
MADATAC06, Madrid, Spain
Prism 16, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, UK
Arcanum Film and Animation Festival, Lendava, Slovenia
Color Arts Festival, Zalaegerszeg, Hungary
Synthesis Exhibition, Umbrella Studios, Townsville
#lumen25: “Mineral Machine Music”, AV work by @oldmateo http://t.co/XdVvPZ0dmf #lumenexhibition #digitalart pic.twitter.com/2ePjAP0Qkn
— The Lumen Prize (@lumenprize) September 25, 2014
Lumen Winners’ Events 2014 from Lumen Prize Exhibition on Vimeo.
Image Gallery
(Click individual thumbnails to view full screen images):
Mineral Machine Music was produced in a tropical fever in far north Queensland at James Cook University’s School of Creative Arts and the School of Earth and Environment Sciences. Editing and mixing was conceived and completed at studios on Hale Street and The Strand between December 2013 and January 2014.
Installation Guidelines
Ideally the work is designed to be viewed as a large scale projection where sound can be amplified using standard stereo speakers complimented with a bass amplifier to accentuate the seismic recordings and other low frequency sounds embedded into the soundtrack. In a gallery configuration, as it was at Umbrella Studios, the work can be displayed on a large LCD screen with headphones. Again this should be complimented by a bass amplifier to support the experience of the soundtrack by emphasizing both the aural and physical sensations of the lower frequencies. In the gallery space, while obviously a strong presence, the bass tones are infrequent, separated by disquieting patches of silence, all of which add to a peculiar sense of foreboding in the space.
A Work In Progress
Mineral Machine Music was initially designed to be an interactive work in which a viewer experienced the magnification of both the mineral samples and the urban subway textures at different magnifications and depths according to their proximity to the screen. The space in which this would occur would be a long corridor with the screen and bass amplifier at one end and a concealed entrance at the other. Pairs of stereo speakers would be placed at 1m intervals along the length of the corridor. The audio track consisting of the subway station and urban samples, musical notes, rock crushing samples, seismic activity and the hum from deep space would follow the viewer as they moved through the space gaining intensity as they approached the screen.
As this was the first collaboration between Goodwin & Fay and with most of the production roles shared between them what appears here is merely an example of the aesthetic relationship between the visual samples and an indication of the type of sound design techniques that might be possible. It is the ambition of the project team that it would be further explored as an interactive work. The project therefore requires an expanded collaboration with an experienced Sound Designer and a MAX/MSP or Processing programmer to manipulate both the images and audio tracks with respect to the movement of the audience in the exhibition/screening space.
Mitch Goodwin :: Screen Cache 