Tuning Tube Experiment, NYC, 1994

After making several installations where our ideas of tuned resonance were accessible to any curious passers by, we decided to see if we could capture some of these principles on video. In this way, our work could be  presented to friends and other interested minds simply by pushing a button on a VCR, especially in cases where travel to an actual site might prove difficult or impossible. To this end, we made a portable tuning tube of 3 sections of HPI plastic which had the interesting visual property of being like a black mirror on the inside. We added a video camera to document the sources of these extraordinary sounds.  (Plus, we had heard that seeing is believing.) 

We took the same system to 3 varied locations;  a waterfall, a pedestrian overpass at the World Trade Center in NYC, and rush hour on the street outside the Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue and 75th Street.  The results were outstanding both visually and sonically.  At the Whitney, we were absorbed by hearing and seeing the rich melodic content of urban sonics and did not realize until later that we had been recording through a violent hostage situation which had developed at a Jewelry store on  the next block.  The gunshots, sirens, and Police warnings can clearly be heard on the recordings.  (Hostage Variations on our recent CD RESONANCE, O+A 95)

Around this same time Sam had been experimenting with digital filters. These GRM filters were added as a tool bank for exploring city resonances and added a clarity and detail of refinement to the work.  The sounds now passed from the tuning tube which generated an overtone series to the computer which could, in turn, be used as a window of exploration into the hearing perception, allowing an almost symphonic  range of voices buried in the city ambience to be heard.

City sounds cause the air inside the tuning tube to resonate sympathetically generating melodieson the overtone series of the tube.