Virtual Voltage Sculptures

CLOCKER' PERFORMANCE bll\GRIlM ample, I came upon a couple of sentences that uncannily resembled the central image of Clocker: "The thing I'd like most in the world is to make clocks run backward No, with thought, by concentrating until I force time to move back" [1]. Later, Calvino describes "the catoptric instruments of the seventeenth century, little theatres of various design where a figure is seen multiplied by the variations of angles between the mirrors". He wants to reconstruct a "polydyptic theatre, in which about sixty little mirrors lining the inside of a large box transform a bough into a forest, a lead soldier into an army, a booklet into a library" [2]. Perhaps Calvino would not have minded if I added to his list of lovely images: "A clock into a room full of clocks." Fig. I. Schematic diagram of Qocker, showing the clock with microphone, the galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor, the digital delaysystern and the sound amplifiers (AMPs). sity at that time, lent me a digital the rotunda, within earshot of the delay system that he had designed audience. The sounds of the clock and built, and I began working on the were played through one pair of piece. speakers spaced far apart; those of I miked the clock and routed the the delayed clock were heard through ticks through the delay system, con- a second pair, similarly spaced. The trolling the delay times with the out- performer sat quietly in the rotunda put voltage from the GSR (Fig. I). As of the gallery, with the electrodes changes in skin resistance produced taped to his fingers, while I adjusted changes in voltage, the ticks of the the sensitivity of the electrodes and clock would slow down and speed up, tried to maintain a null point on the changing timbre as they did so. voltage meter. During the performClockerwas first performed during the ance I changed the time delay set- 'Real and Imaginary Spaces' series at tings, consecutively, from 120 msec to the Kitchen in New York City, on 1 sec and 7.6 sec, and back again. 7 April 1978. There were a few sub- From time to time I would sample sequent performances in the United portions of the changing sounds, States and Europe, but because of the making loops of various lengths, relatively low sound quality of the which would be sped up and slowed delay-it was an early prototype-I down by the changing resistances. abandoned the piece soon after. The result was an acoustic mix of In early 1988 Nicolas Collins, who clock ticks, their voltage-controlled had helped me record some study ver- delays and the natural delays prosions for Clockerseveral years before, duced by the echoes from the floors, called me with information about a walls and ceilings of the resonant new digital delay system that he gallery spaces. In subsequent perforthought would suit my needs-a mances-including the Stadtgarten, Digitech RDS 7.6 with a continuously Cologne; the Kunstlerhaus variable voltage-control input (see Bethanien, Berlin; and Crowell ConFig . I). He procured a unit for me cert Hall, Wesleyan University, and together we worked on it. We Middletown, Connecticut-multichansoon thereafter performed a new ver- nel delay systems were used to suggest sion of Clocker at the L'oeil de Poisson changes in the size and acoustic chargallery in Quebec City on 17 March acteristics of the performance spaces. 1988. A week later I performed it During this time I was reading Italo twice with Patrick Ready in the Calvino's Ifon a Winters Night a rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Traveler. Throughout the book, I In the Vancouver version, four would come upon images and ideas small Aurotone loudspeakers were that seemed remarkably close to placed in separate galleries, outside those I use in my own work. For ex622 Abstracts References l. !talo Calvino, Ifon a Winter:' Night a Traveler (New York: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1981) p.21. 2. Calvina [1] p. 162. VIRTUAL VOLTAGE SCULPTURES Clifford A. Pickover (computer scientist ) , IBM ThomasJ.Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, U.S.A. Received 5 February 1990. Acceptedfor publication l7y RogerF. Malina. Sculpture is one...