Former fellow Kerstin Ergenzinger presents the sono-tactile architecture Pluvial in the framework of the AlxMusic Festival at Ars Electronica 2020 In Keplers Gardens at JKU Campus Linz, Austria. Pluvial is part of the research project Rhythmic Textures that Ergenzinger realised during her fellowship at the Graduate School 2016-2018.

Pluvial is a sono-tactile architecture that follows the associative and physical quality of rain noise. It connects the listening body with a sonic, animated and partly self-organizing instrument. An acoustic environment arises that unfolds in time and space. Beyond a coupling to digital impulses, an artificial organism is created based on the principles of AI. The eighty-channel sculptural instrument consists of self-made, digitally controlled drums that work according to the String-Drum principle and use the shape memory alloy Nitinol as instrument string. Their metallic resonance tubes lift and lower at the heat-sensitive, kinetic nitinol strings, sending and knocking swelling rhythms and rushing harmonies through space. In analogy to the phenomenon of rain, these string drums are driven by random on-off voltage pulses, which in turn are modulated by the density and intensity of collected precipitation measurements on the world‘s oceans. The physical body of the drum cloud acts like a set of bandwidth filters. In addition, each drum is equipped with a feedback pendulum allowing the rhythms of the individual drums to diverge further. 

When?
11 - 13 September 2020

Where?
Johannes Kepler Universität (JKU)
Altenberger Straße 69
4040 Linz
Austria

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