Reflection II, 2008-2009
MDF, car paint, video projector, custom software. Material CNC-milled MDF. 90 x 72 x 12 cm
Commissioned by: 5 Days Off, Amsterdam
Reflection was inspired by and derived from the musical piece of the same title by Frans de Waard. The sculpture was commissioned by the 5 Days Off Festival in Amsterdam for the Frozen exhibition. Reflection is characterized by 12 musical motives, which appear in an almost linear succession. To show the individual makeup of the motives, they were divided into the smallest distinctive parts. A FFT frequency spectrum analysis was performed on these audio clips. The resulting intensity values were arranged in a coordinate system consisting of frequency and time. Higher intensity values for a given frequency at a given time resulted in an elevation of the generated mesh. This effectively produced a height-field representing the spectral structure of the music. Further optimizations like adaptive filtering and logarithmic scaling of the values were performed to better represent the human way of hearing and to enhance details. The meshes created in this fashion were then arranged horizontally on two conjoined tracks. The final sculpture was created with a CNC Milling Machine.
The sculpture came to life in collaboration with Benjamin Maus.
