Contribution to The Shape of Things to Come

Bella da Silva Buxbom is a Danish-Portuguese artist living in Trondheim who in her work often has explored geometrical shapes in the basic colours. When Bella approached me asking me to assist her in making some of her three dimensional shapes into interactive sound-playing objects as a part of the exhibition The Shape of Things to Come I thought it was a very interesting challenge. The exhibition was displayed in Trondheim Kunstforening 29.8. - 29.9.2024.

The four shapes Bella wanted me to sonify were a big soft pillow, an irregular quadrilateral, a triangle and a kind of arrow-shaped form. The shapes were to be put in a room together with other of her pieces so as to invite interaction and play from visitors.

For each of these shapes we developed very different instruments. Bella had the overall artistic vision and gave the direction for the development, while I did the sound design and programming. The four sound playing instruments were all using NGIMU motion sensors that were wirelessly connected to a computer running Max displaying sensor information and Csound receiving the sensor data and producing the sound.