Out of Hand
A live installation of sound-drawing instruments.
Artsource Gallery, Old Customs House Walyalup, January 19-28, 2024
Out of Hand is a collaboration between sound artist, Tom Allum, and architect, Beth George. Over the duration of the exhibition, Allum and George work with mark-making machines to amass a body of drawings. Walking, clashing, entangling, shuddering, looping, and dancing to a vibrational and site-responsive score, the implements, made of everyday componentry and found objects, are hypnotic to watch. Like wayward creatures, they are undisciplined and unpredictable. Shifts in the sound score that moves them, loss of media to the page, gravity, air movement, and stretching of the suspension systems result in constant transformations. The machines are not autonomous—while the artists remain at arm’s length from the drawings, the sound inputs and physical infrastructures require constant tuning in an unwieldy choreography of senses, bodies, and media. In an ever-changing residency, no drawing can be made twice.
Motor sound input, soundscape output
Inputs are created using wave-table synthesis (ASM Hydrasynth). We refer to these as ‘motor sounds’, concerned with oscillation. These sounds vibrate the speaker cones, which are wired in out-of-phase pairs, mobilising the drawing implements. At higher volumes, sound waves are visible in the suspension wires. A vintage sampler (SP404SX) provides a tunable, low frequency sine wave to resist gravity and mark the page.
After a run of drawings are hung, the images are scanned and fed into an image-spectrogram translation tool which interprets the image as if it were a digital audio waveform. These translations can be both heard and seen. We refer to these as second generation sound inputs.
At this point, a soundscape begins to appear and additional layers of percussion, sub tone and harmony are added using samplers (OP-Z, SP404mkii). A stereo microphone pair is installed to capture the speaker jams and these compositions are released for sharing →
Drawing Implements
The Bellman: Pencil holder with charcoal pencil on a straight section of wire with a small, cantilevered metal bell
Big Bell: heavy wire hanger with large metal bell counterweighting charcoal pencil in holder with two chastity belts
Cloudmaker: top-hung speaker with numerous acrylic threads of equal length connected to the cone. Taps in charcoal dust
Disruptor: suspended counterweights on thick wire, granite rock and metal bell on woven strap. Not a mark maker, but an item engaged to interfere with other implements
Feather walkers: pencil holders with willow charcoal or charcoal pencil and various wire assemblies incorporating raven, magpie, and cockatoo feathers
Pas de Deux: from the French “step of two” or partnered dance, a thick wire hanger on fishing swivel with willow charcoal stick in holder on one side and paper smudging stick on the other
Hanging and weighting systems
Chastity belt: metal garden hose repair loop
Hopper: acrylic thread connecting two, opposite speaker cones with a vee-drop of acrylic thread to a swivel. Encourages consistent position and jumping action
Walker: acrylic thread connecting two, opposite speaker cones, incorporating two clamps which implements can move between on suspended wire or acrylic thread with fishing swivels
Wind catcher: plastic bag with looped wire mouth, suspended by microphone stand to catch moving air with a long, suspended acrylic wire drop