sound-art-text:

Cycloïd-E, a sound sculpture by Andre and Michel Decosterd

To start off, a desire to approach mechanisms that produce visible undulatory movements and to set them against the development of sound waves. A pendulum. And if this pendulum was made up of horizontally articulated segments, if a motor replaced the gravitational effect? The segments of the pendulum become metallic tubes equipped with sound sources and with measuring instruments capable of making them resonate according to their rotations. A succession of unexpected movements becomes apparent. The equilibrium in the energy exchanges between the segments is almost perfect; the trajectories are surprisingly right and natural. We’re faced with Harmony. Through its fascinating and hypnotic dance, Cycloïd-ε delineates the space of sound orbits and creates a unique kinetic and polyphonic work, in the likeness of the «Cosmic ballet» to which the physicist Johannes Kepler refers to in his «Music of spheres» in 1619.