34. Sonic laboratory

I like to work with kids. I found it very challenging , especially keeping their attention focused when I want to explain them something they never heard and see before. One should use a lot of imagination and theatrical skills to hold their interest, otherwise they won't give a damn to your efforts.

This time I was invited to prepare an educational performance for elementary school in Laško with some additional students from other schools in our community. About 1000 pupils between 7 and 14 years filled up the main hall of local cultural center for 4 times.

I asked my nephew Franko to help me with performance and add some of his jokes into the scenario. We also prepared a rap song with his lyrics to make things more exciting.

I took a role of mad professor and Franko was himself, accidentally lost in my 'Sonic laboratory'. I've explained him my method of work and showed him what sound does with powder and liquid.

I also told him about neanderthal flute from Divje babe cave, the oldest instrument found so far, dating more than 40.000 years back. As an instrument builder using mostly discarded materials, I feel closely related to our ancestors which used to make music out of anything appropriate they could find.

After final song we invited most curious pupils to join us on stage and take a look on my sound devices like efektor, theremin and cymatic machines for sound visualization. Their enthusiasm exceeded my expectations and gave me a great reward for all the efforts.

28. Chladni Plates

I was asked if I could make a sound sculpture with chladni plates for visitors of Museum of Senses in Split, Croatia. While playing with violin bow on different plates and trying to get interesting patterns I was amazed again and again with this simple contraption which principles were complete mystery two centuries ago.

After finishing the sculpture I spend some more time with plates to see what another configuration is capable. This time I used electric driver and theremin as a sound source and the results were quite exciting.

19. Cymatics On The Edge of Science

On The Edge of Science is a production of Croatian national TV hosted by renown journalist and author Krešimir Mišak. He explores many fields on the verge of official science like parapsychology, alternative approaches in medicine, altered states of consciousness, alternative history etc.  I was invited to present my cymatics research and put it in a wider context. So we discussed about history of cymatics, fractal geometry, dissipative structures of  Ilya Prigogine, rhythmanalysis of Henry Lefebvre, morphogenetic fields of Rupert Sheldrake, Pribram's concept of holographic mind, Bohm's implicite order and about the role of vibrations in general perception of life and the cosmos.
It was an important step in my efforts to raise awareness of public toward vibrational phenomena and the importance of sound as one of the basic formative processes in cosmos.

You can watch the episode here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yYYUkfUK24

10. The Stroj - Metafonik: Soundtrack for metamechanics

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of album Metafonik  I've made with The Stroj collective. It will be our fourth album in 16 years of our creative existance and resistance.

Name 'The Stroj' comes from Slovene word ‘stroj’ which means 'a machine’. Pronounced as 'stroy', together with ‘the’, the phrase sounds as ‘destroy’, so The Stroj is a pun with two meanings: machine and destruction.

I have gathered The Stroj in 1997 in Laško, Slovenia. Originally The Stroj was a percussive band, consisting of eight members who used plastic and metal waste barrels, discarded machine parts and various working tools to make our own musical language. Distinctive percussive compositions, mechanically structured rhythms and industrial sounding  instruments marked our early musical work. Music from that period can be found on albums Ventilator (1999) and Gremo! (2002). When artist and musician Aleksij Kobal joined the collective, the group's music became enriched by original wind and string instruments, as recorded on the album Cona/The Zone (2006). All three albums were produced by Aldo Ivančič (Borghesia, Bast), who had an important influence on distinctive sound during this period. Until now, more than 30 musicians and performers collaborated with us and became a part of  The Stroj story. 

You can find more info about The Stroj collective here: www.thestroj.com

 

On our new album Metafonik we are developing the concept of material music, based mostly on heavy percussions, further with new electro mechanical instruments, electronics and computer. My vision of metamechanical music forced me to upgrade our instrumental arsenal with instruments from all eras of human creative history: most basic accoustic percussions and strings, electro mechanical inventions from past century as coils and piezo pickups and modern electronic devices which allows us to play live using field recordings and samples and manipulate them almost without limits.

Here's the video for our first single, released  Animation of sound which appears several times in second part of the video is called cymatics. It is a physical phenomena which arises when small particles of fine powders or liquids are exposed to mechanical vibrations. For this video I used strong loudspeaker as mechanical driver and fine metal powder and silver dust as medium. So what you see are real sound effects of the composition on matter.

 Our latest single from Album Metafonik is Zombie Hunters. You can download it free from SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/the-stroj/the-stroj-zombie-hunters

 

If you want to get your own copy of Metafonik, please contact me on metamekanix@gmail.com

9. Cymatics – The Spirit of Matter

Somewhere in the middle of 18th century Ernst Florence Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827) threw  a fist of salt on thin metal plate and rub its edge with a violin bow. He was very surprised when noticed that every tone he got from the metal plate rearanged salt in different pattern. He was so impressed with this discovery that he dedicated a major part of his life to further investigations on field of accoustics. He demonstrated his experiments all over Europe and published his discoveries in a book 'Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges (Discoveries in the Theory of Sound)'. The book was published in 1787 and because of its importance he is today known as the father of accoustics. Chladni proved that the pressure derived from sound waves affects physical matter.

  

In the  sixties in past century, Swiss physician and natural scientist Hans Jenny (1901-1972) rediscovered Chladni's experiments and started with his own research on that field. He used piezo oscillators to vibrate different metal plates and membranes which allowed him to made further discoveries in a field he named cymatics. He derived that name from greek words 'to kyma' – the wave and 'ta kymatika' – matters pertaining to waves.

 

His discoveries were published in two volumes of book 'Cymatics – A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration (1967 /1972). Jenny noticed that patterns, created by vibrations, oscilations and rhythmical pulses can be found anywhere in nature. So he was convinced that biological evolution is a result of vibrations. His experiments were also presented in a great short movie 'Cymatics – Bringing Matter To Life With Sound' which can be found here:

I've accidentally see cymatics for the first time in the beginning of 2007 when watching Discovery Channel and in the evening of the same day I've already performed my first experiments with flour from my kitchen and dismantled loudspeaker.

Two years later I managed to prepare first cymatic project Kymatikon. I used cymatics to visualize live concert with The Stroj collective on a big screen in Kinodvor cinema in Ljubljana. It was the first presentation of cymatics in Slovenia and the video is avaliable here:

http://vimeo.com/4441357

From 2010 I'm using my own system for cymatic visualization named Kymatikon regularly in different musical projects of my own and I'm still thrilled with results as I was the first time I've seen it.

Here you can see a compilation of my favourite experiments: