Susceptible Chambers (Working Title)
EMPAC RESIDENCY 1 - AUGUST 27-SEPTEMBER 10, 2023
Extended Microphones Project Proposal
Musicians and composers have always looked to extend, augment or enhance the instruments around them. From the simple addition of a wooden mute on the bridge of a cello as a way to attenuate the overtones, to John Cage’s use of everyday materials such as screws, nails or rubber erasers which were inserted into the strings of a piano for his Sonatas and Interludes, creating a kind of westernized living room Gamelan. We add these alternative materials to familiar musical instruments in order to change our relationship to that object from a sonic standpoint. We hear the result of these materials interfering with one another, and we also hear the possibilities of a completely new sonic landscape which can be discovered by experimenting with the right combination of the materials themselves: piano string + metal screw inserted at the harmonic node = the sound of a bell being tolled.
The Extended Microphones Project (EMP) is a sound-based research, development, and performance project by composers Jessie Marino (DE) and Antonia Barnett-McIntosh (NZ) in which the typical construction of simple microphones will be designed and prepared using alternative materials. EMP will fabricate relationships between microphones and the objects they are amplifying.
Microphones are designed to replicate the mechanical oscillations of the human ear drum, transmitting and translating sonic waves into electrical impulses. Our microphone design will rely on a basic battery-powered condenser microphone circuit. The capsule and electronics of the microphone are typically housed inside a metal enclosure, designed to protect the electrical components. In between the capsule and the outside world, there is a protective grid. This grid acts as a filter and is designed to reduce direct contact of water or dust with the delicate microphone capsule.
For the Extended Microphones Project, we will research and develop alternative materials from which we will build new designs for enclosures and protective grids to house a condenser microphone circuit. What would it sound like to embed a microphone capsule inside a terra cotta pot with a grid made from dried out pine cones, or to cast a microphone enclosure completely out of agar-agar (a vegan alternative to gelatin)?
Our new microphones will be paired with a sounding object or instrument selected specifically for its unique sonic interaction with the microphone itself, creating a direct and intimate relationship between the sounding body and the recording body while allowing us to capture the auditory acoustic space in between.
We are interested in creating new sonic landscapes from the synthesis of physical augmentations, filters and unusual placements of the microphones specially designed and built to have a direct sonic relationship to the instrument or sounding object which it amplifies.
Objectives/Outcomes
EMP aims to realize the following goals:
1.) to research and develop alternative microphone design and unique relationships to a sounding object.
2.) to record and perform a collaborative soundscape composition which explicitly features the relationships built between our Extended Microphones and Sounding Objects.
3.) to develop an educational workshop based on our Extended Microphones research and performance practices which could be taught to a general public.
Sources of Inspiration - Workshop 1, Melbourne/Naarm
