David Wicks :: Works » sound

Trace: Resonance Field

Wicks — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:31:31 +0000

Created in collaboration with Pete Hawkes, Trace is a series of ceramic plates installed in the desert that are struck according to past local seismic activity. Each plate repeats the recent history of movement at a site in the surrounding mountain ranges, transforming it into rhythmic percussion. The overall effect is something like a seismic gamelan, a subtle audible and visible trace of the activity that came before it.

Audio excerpt from Trace (wear headphones)

Trace work was installed in 29 Palms—just North of Joshua Tree—as part of the Dry Immersion III: Desert Projects exhibition. Process photos and video are available on flickr.

We used python to turn the seismic waveforms into data usable by an arduino microcontroller that drove the motors. Elaine Hu fabricated the ceramics.

The making and exhibition of Trace was supported by a grant from UCIRA.

Portable Forest

Wicks — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:47:40 +0000

Portable Forest is a jacket that plays bird songs and the sound of water. As you zip up the jacket, bird calls begin to echo around you. You start at a trailhead, a few birds nearby—just able to make out the sound of a nearby brook—and progress down a riverine path until reaching a waterfall when the jacket is fully zipped up.

Portable Forest is an attempt to create a portable natural space; one the wearer can raise around themselves wherever they are.

I gathered audio on a series of hikes in Southern California to set the tone for the walk. For the final tracks, I used bird sounds from ASU and a water sound from freesound.org.

Rebecca Fenton helped with photography and gave sewing advice. ITP provided information on making potentiometers using conductive thread.

This prototype jacket was made with Arduino. Small pockets of green fabric were sewn in to an existing jacket—one which I’ve taken many hikes through the woods in—to hold speakers that responded to the zipping and unzipping of the jacket.

Source code for controlling the embedded MP3 players from Arduino is available on github. Process photos can be seen in the flickr set.

Transition

Wicks — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:23:56 +0000

Transition, a short animation, was created using a system that overlays an audio spectrum onto a spatialized representation of cellular automata. The forms generated shift from one representation to the next, constantly inhabiting a state of change.

The software used to generate Transition was written in processing. I created the music for this video with a few tracks of classical guitar and a bent electronic toy.

Walking Cubes

Wicks — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:46:15 +0000

Interactive music visualization. Music: Mike Lengel.

Interact with the cubes.

Monkey Town Visuals

Wicks — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:01:06 +0000

My friend Zach Gage was making visuals for the band Ava Luna and invited me to make some sound-responsive animations for their show at Monkey Town. Shown here are the visuals I created as viewed from our perch during the show.