Resonant Spaces - Korean Friendship Bell
Installation for soundpedro and Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA, June 1, 2019. More about the site here.
Four snare drums with transducers, each drum driven by a sound file cycling through recordings of partials derived from the Korean Friendship Bell, which Angels Gate and Fort MacArthur overlook towards the Los Angeles Harbor.
These sounds arrange themselves in the form of a clock, such that different beacons arrive together at the quarter and half hour. When all four are speaking at the top of the hour, their combined sound reproduces the resonant frequencies of the Korean Friendship Bell.
When sounding together the beacons fade into an irregular droning texture, as different overtones collide, reinforce, and interfere with one another. At a distance, this texture fades into and blends with that of the natural soundscape generated by crickets, birds, and nearby pedestrian and auto traffic. At close range, the sound of an individual drum saturates its siting location.
Participants stopping to listen to a beacon in one location experience the interaction between nearby and far-away reflections, and carve their own physical and aural path through the space over the duration of the event.
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