I was awarded a Scholarly and Creative Activities seed grant of $2000 to support the production of up to 300 autonomous units that I talked about in my research in a post from 2010.We will be able to produce a wide number and range of these units which would are stable enough to withstand normal climate changes. I want to install the work in outdoor locations for extended periods of time. The grant is going to really help with the costs of this project; I am most excited about hiring research assistants from my advanced students.
I wasn’t sure why I wanted to install these in the natural setting until I had a few more experiences living with the work. I was living amongst a limited number (ten or so) of the autonomous singers and I began to notice some interesting phenomena.
The song from ten of these units was really complex. It shifts through alignment and interference of the signals and create a complex set of rhythms. An electronic musician was visiting the studio one night and we had a very interesting discussion about the how work exhibits the basics of emergence theory . My second observation is that throughout the day the chirps emitted change as the angle of the sun/shade, clouds, etc. would move by. This emergent chorus shifts with the environment; the changes create a soundscape that is directly tracking the movement of time and really resonated on physical level. It is an ecosystem of input and response emerging. It is very strange and wondrous, you can feel this deeply and intuitively.