Donna Legault has been working away in the lab in preparation for her role in the Prototype show during Electric Fields and had a fantastic discovery. Her work uses a PureData pathc to pitch shift sounds in the in-audible range and pumps those frequencies into stripped down speakers. The very very low frequencies make the speakers move alot but they don’t make sounds we can hear.
As she was working away today testing different arrangements she connected a few dots that make you head spin. When you come into contact with the negative side of the basic RCA input into her computer the speakers replicates the beat of your heart with their movement. The trick is that the PureData patch is pitch shifting the sound into an inaudible range, so this is not a magnificent of the sound of your heart, but rather a physical manifestation of the current in your body. We assume this is similar to the tech principal behind Rafael Lozano-Hemmer “Pulse Room” project, which makes the current visible through lights, but seeing the movement of the speakers and knowing that this is based not on the sound of your body but the energy moving is amazing
Tags: Donna Legault, heart, Lab, low frequencies, Prototype, sound art