Client: Sarushima Dark Museum

Overview

Soundform No.2 is a minimalistic soundscape and kinetic art installation that transforms heat energy into sound and creates a poetically evolving composition in conjunction with natural forces. Influenced by environmental conditions—such as wind and temperature—the artwork sonically explores an ecological crossroads between nature and culture.

The artwork relies on a scientific discovery made in the 17th-Century, where it was observed that a column of air can produce a self-amplifying standing wave when heated. We use this insight to generate an immersive and interactive soundscape using only inert and non-computational materials. The result of which is both surprising and intriguing as a sonic form of expression. Combined with the site specificity of an interesting natural location, the sculpture provides an ecological, generative and interactive experience to audiences.

Soundform No.2 is a significant evolution of our previous work Soundform No.1, which was featured at Ars Electronica in 2019, and which later won the Japan Media Arts Festival’s Excellence Award in 2020.

Goals

This project is a longitudinal research project based on exploring the activation of public spaces through expressive materials driven by forces and other ecological inputs. The research was initiated by Mikhail Mansion in 2018 while researching at Kakehi Lab, University of Tokyo. Through separate commissions and grants the work finds stimulus to evolve into new forms.

Additional Information

Natura Machina is an experimental artist collective that theorizes and explores a new aesthetic convergence between nature and machine through the advent of new media art. Drawing on nature for inspiration, input and source, Natura Machina seeks to uncover new modalities of experience, communication and creative expression. Through research, design and fabrication of new media arts installations, the group explores forces, ephemera, patterns, perception, interactions, sensation, motions, spaces, sounds and numerical relationships between natural environments and artificial systems and machines.