Tech Tonic Plates

Tech Tonic Plates

Composition for Electronics (2012)

17 mins

Premiere: September 27, 2012, Pomona College Museum of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, CA

Made possible by the Summer Experience in the Arts Award from the Mellon Foundation’s Elemental Arts Initiative

Installed as audiovisual installation by Mari Matsutoya & Evelyn Saylor, June 27-29, 2014, in Gallery Dzialdov, Berlin, Germany

Program notes from the installation

Tech Tonic Plates is an electronic composition conceptually based on the geological phenomena associated with tectonic plates. The sounds are a combination of found samples, manipulated data relating to the movement of the plates, and synthesized sounds. Recordings of earthquakes, underwater gaseous jets, and the movements of glaciers are used as unmanipulated samples. Tectonic plate-related data made hearable through the process of sonification, including seismic data from an eruption of Mt. Etna, are also used as source material. In Evelyn Saylor and Mari Matsutoya’s audiovisual installation, the geological phenomena reduced to sonified data is then returned back to the physical and visible realm with the use of water, light and motors as the vibrations in the water are reflected onto the ceiling of the space.

The sounds for Tech Tonic Plates were composed by Evelyn Saylor in Summer 2012 upon receipt of the Mellon Elemental Arts Initiative Summer Experience in the Arts Award.
The visual translation was designed by Mari Matsutoya.