A record player that plays slices of wood.
Modified record player, wood, sleeves. 2011
Thanks to: Pro-ject Audio, Karla Spiluttini, Ivo Francx, Rohol
traubeck.com
A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.
if you look closely you can see that in the later part of the video the record on the player changes. the first one is a more minimalistic fir tree, the second an ash tree with a rather complex texture. the sounds are excerpts of these records. one “track” is 4:30, that is the time it takes the motor to move the tonearm from the rim to the center of the record. sometimes the camera is still a bit glitchy so it is missing to recognise some rings. if you put other woods on it the change in sound is even more dramatic, for example with dark walnut wood. i will upload some mp3s to my site in the near future to document this