Servo-Controlled Radio Experiments

I've been playing a shortwave radio with Clairaudient for a few years, and I've been considering ways of using the radio in the context of installations rather than live performances. To this effect, I've been collecting vintage transistor radios, but it wasn't until I was turned on to Processing that my purpose for these radios became clear...

Shelter (v.2)

Now with sound!...there seemed to be a time when i could recall with lucidity the narrative of my life. i awoke however to a fractured image. in my phrenetic quest to regain my past, i found it only to retreat. it was upon relinquishing control that it returned , not as i remembered it, but as it now lives within me. this is an exercise in letting go...

Nauman Remixed

I have recently returned from London, where I attended the second NOISETHEORYNOISE conference. While I was there, I had a chance to go to the Tate Modern museum, which featured a sound installation by artist Bruce Nauman. I was so captivated that I wanted to capture it as a sound/image collage. It's a little threadbare given that I didn't have too much equipment on me, but you get the idea...

I designed and constructed this electro- mechano- acoustic sculpture in collaboration with artist Terry Adkins for his show 'Black Beethoven' now running at Pageant Gallery, 607 Bainbridge St.,Philadelphia. Reminiscent of cylindrical music boxes of the 19th century and invoking the intonate of Futurist Luigi Russolo, the piece seeks to emulate the acoustic environment of one afflicted by a malfunction of their auditory sense.

“Autopoiesis” is a collaborative performance between Clairaudient (Stephen Hastings-King and Brett Ian Balogh) and the windsleepers (Amira Hanafi and Laura Goldstein). The performers will utilize piano, electronics, percussion, voices and projected images and texts to create a real-time audio and visual environment that might be understood as a three-dimensional poem, a visual experience, a musical experiment, or all of these at once. For more information, check the recordings link at www.clairaudient.org

This is an experiment utilizing my new toy, the Canon Powershot SD110 Digital ELPH, a sweet little camera. My favorite feature is the 60s. sound clip that can be attached to each photo. I spent 3h. on my front porch taking pictures and recording sound and assembled them into a visual/audio collage.

Electrocomp Collage

Inspired by the purchase of an EML Electrocomp 101, I began to experiment with sonic collage as a counterpart to the dynamic visual collages such as Shelter. I recorded a number of short phrases and used Macromedia Director to randomly play them back with a maximum of four samples playing at any one time. This is only a test. Please make sure you have the latest version of the shockwave player for your browser here.

When I was in high school, I used to drive around to abandoned factories and such to take pictures. This small building, located near the old Warden Mine, looks like it used to be a garage. I like the feeling there and used it as the setting for one of my earlier pieces. Last year, I went back with my digital camera and shot a montage of the interior for posterity...

It was time to move, having lived in the same place for ten years. I loved the spacious raw interior filled with artwork and gadgets, however, I felt weighed down by it all. In order to make myself feel better about leaving, I thought I would try to create a 'memory' of my space that could embody its various states throughout time.

From time to time I do some design consulting for the Teleimmersion project. This time they needed to mount four firewire board cameras in a cluster. I thought it would be nice if the distance between the focal points could be adjusted around a central axis. Here they are in action...

Designed as a peripheral to the Analyser, it functions as a stored-program unit and operation counter. The program is stored on a brass platter in which pins are inserted. The pins are read by a row of switches and control pulses are sent to the Analyser. A series of vacuum-tube decade counters would monitor the number of operations the Analyser performed.

‘MOOSE’ stands for Multi-spectral Omnidirectional Optical SEnsor. I designed and constructed this device for the GRASP Laboratory when I was their project manager. It is a novel optical sensor in that it provides a 360-degree field of view in three separate spectral bands with the benefit of having a single viewpoint.

Corpus Spagyricus (the body of mercury) is a kinetic assemblage that consists of a sinusoidally driven mercury switch. The rocking motion causes the mercury to flow back and forth, interrupting a circuit between a lamp, photovoltaic cell and an ammeter. The resulting two-state output of the meter reflects the asymptotes of the sinusoidal motion of the switch...

Sensorium is a collage commenting on the degree to which technology has influenced our perception of ourselves as well as our relationship to others. Here, electrical apparatuses, magnetic lines of force and waveforms replace the natural sensory apparatus of the subject restrained in the chair...

In a dream, I was constructing this piece on the floor of a great hall made of polished marble. Upon finishing, it came to me what I was to write in the book. Fearing that I would forget what it was I was to write, I took a golden key from my pocket and scratched the words into the surface of a step in a winding staircase. When I awoke from the dream, I had forgotten them...

This is an image of my first installation, whose intent was to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior. It is a room within a room, such that the viewer has the sense of being inside the wall. Through a small aperture, the viewer is permitted to peer into the inner space. The viewer sees a reflected image of his/her head upon the seated human form...