Neural KNot Video Documentation 00:01:01
Video is 1 minute long, sound begins 40 seconds in. White text on black background describes the work while a camera walks around the installation.
This work is the result of a 2021 residency with the Manitoba Neuroscience Network where I tinkered with the engineering techniques used in the design of diagnostic instrumentation and bio-systems modeling. Using a crip-technoscience methodology I reimagined the use of sensors, 3D medical imagery, and diagnostic equipment to take APD away from a clinical diagnosis and into the creative realm of electronic sound art.
Sonic
Embedded in the KNot are two contact microphones connected to the computer running the 3D scan. Sound composition software takes the colour values from the 3D scan and generates a looping electronic warbling sound. At the same time, the contact microphones pickup sounds from the threads running through the KNot while the waveform sculpture rotates. These live sounds are processed using a generative algorithm that distorts, loops, and clips incoming sounds before adding them to the composition. Two speakers sitting on the floor play the sounds into the gallery.
Visual
Hanging in the centre of the room is a wire and thread sculpture - Neural KNot - that represents neural pathways. Directly behind, a 3D scan of the same KNot rotates on a monitor. On one side of the KNot there are three slowly unwinding spools of thread on microphone stands; on the other side is a microphone stand with a motorized waveform sculpture that gathers the threads. The shape of the waveform is a representation of a word I regularly mis-hear. Over time, the thread accumulates on the waveform, obscuring the original shape, which illustrates the muffling and reordering of speech that I experience. A computer, cables, mixer, amplifier, computer monitor, and two speakers make up the rest of the work.
