We’ve featured Dmitry’s work before on the blog – he wrote in recently to share this project with us called “red“.
Optic-sound electronic object.
In 2015 I had a chance to work with the legacy of the famous Prometheus Special Design Bureau in Kazan. The collaboration resulted in gradual reconstruction of one of their earlier installations, titled “The Crystal”. While working on it, I learned a lot about the projects, research and books by the renowned design bureau. The incredible inspiration from visiting and seeing the objects in laboratory has soon turned into the desire to create an object which unites the concepts and ideas of light-sound objects from 60-80s with contemporary technical solutions and materials. Graphic quality, profoundness and the immediate impact of light and color, together with certain archaism of the method, – in my view, these represent rather powerful and interesting alternative to the projection video, if we consider the junction of sound-color-light-graphic. As a result of this media-archeological research there appeared a small optic-light object which for me is rather a pen test anticipating the new direction of interest, intended to build my own personal line of continuity of generations.
At the same time, my interest in crystallography and the wish to use flexible kinetic elements has determined the choice of the main optical output device – the center of the work is a red glass crystal and flexible Fresnel lens. The project includes many reworked electronic devices – a CD-rom, an old scanner, reused electric motors. Multiple moving elements provide wide variability for rather primitive optical elements. It is accomplished by constant change of focal length between the light source, crystal and lens, as well as by changing the crystal’s tilt angle and mechanical distortion of the lens.
The object works autonomously, by algorithm with many accidental events tied to feedback, with sensors defining the position of various mechanical elements in relation to the range of their movement. The sound part has up to 4 voices which depend on the activity of various elements. The sound is also in direct interaction with actual position of those elements, and basically is voicing the process of movement, brightness of light, and intensity of the piece.
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