The Music Machines by Bosch & Simons
“In 1896, Nikola Tesla, one of the great geniuses of the electrical age, strapped a small oscillating motor to the central beam in his Manhattan laboratory and built up a powerful physical resonance that conducted through the building and into the earth to cause an earth-quake in which buildings shook, panes of glass broke and steam pipes ruptured over a twelve block area. He was forced to stop the motor with a blow from a sledge hammer. Tesla stated that he could calculate the resonant frequency of the earth and send into strong vibration with a properly tuned driver of adequate size and specific placement. ” (*)
This supposition is still true for our vibratory projects. While working on the theme “Resonances stimulated by mechanical vibrations” our main interest was not to amplify just one existing frequency, but to create a complex system in which various frequencies influence each other. This to give rise to unstable balances which the slightest change could disturb enough to produce an unpredictable outcome. As in the Electric Swaying Orchestra (1991-92) forced and natural frequencies of objects, then pendulums now sprung constructions, are so attuned to each other that the movements and sounds created by the installations can change almost imperceptibly from order into chaos and vice versa. The role of the computer is paradoxical: although it has power over the mechanics (electric motors), it can foresee only partly the physical outcome of its decisions. Alongside unstable balances and order and chaos, another element is sound. The pure power of sound and the pure existence of sound (music) manifest remains an integral part of al our installations. The medium sound gives power over a specific place, it occupies that space: Our vibratory projects permit us to generate vibrations with which we can fill the space. Sound waves are after all vibrations!
(*) from: ‘The Sound of One Line Scanning’ by Bill Viola in Sound by Artists, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada,1990, p.43