Timepiece (2018) is a performance-installation composed by Sarah Belle Reid, for flugelhorn, augmented trumpet, modular synthesizer, and electroacoustic feedback objects. The piece is inspired by the non-linearity of time, circular causality, now-ness, and the questions, “what is the sound of something that hasn’t happened yet? what is the imprint a sound leaves behind?”
Suspended throughout the performance space are a series of large metal objects: an aluminum garbage can, sheet metal of varying sizes, a deconstructed glockenspiel. On each object are a pair of transducers. A small piezo (or contact microphone) picks up on vibrations that travel through the objects, and a second slightly larger tactile surface transducer receives the output of these vibrations. As a result, the objects function as both microphone and speaker, each amplifying their own unique characteristics inherent to their physical construction and material in addition to any audio sent into them. In this piece, the objects are wired together in such a way that they create a resonant feedback network: the output of one influences the input of another, and so on.
Collaborators
Ryan Gaston live sound, megaphone performer
Justin Scheid rigging design, megaphone performer
Anthony Storniolo megaphone performer
James Vitz-Wong megaphone performer
Chloe Scallion projections
Chloe Stephen producer
Adam Borecki videography
Feedback itself is a process that exists simultaneously in many “nows”—in a feedback loop there ceases to be a clear indication of input and output or past, present, and future (I am particularly fond of imagining this to be a model for time travel, but that might be going too far—for now). These objects become a self-reinforcing sonic environment, which can only be guided by the performer, not controlled.
Another section of Timepiece involves five megaphones with built-in 10-second recording capability. The performer sits in the middle of the room surrounded by a ring of megaphones and very gradually begins to feed their built-in record buffers with silence. But of course, we know that silence is rarely a true absence of sound. The vibrations of a room, the hum of lights, the noise of internal mechanisms and circuits—as the megaphones sample and resample one another these sounds become more and more audible, eventually resulting in a cacophony of piercing tones. This is, of course, another manifestation of feedback. In the same way that the metal objects amplify inaudible vibrations revealing resonances that are inherent to them, the megaphones amplify “silence,” revealing to the audience all the potential sounds that surround them at any moment.