MAGIK

Posted on Jul 5, 2019 in Compositions, Installations, MAGIK, Video, West Coast Radians | 0 comments
Tagged on: ambience, audiovisualization, kenton loewen, live improvisation, live performance, magik, Marina Hasselberg, multichannel diffusion, Nicolas Teichrob, resonance, resonators, space, West Coast Radians

MAGIK is a new Vancouver-based project that brings together Giorgio Magnanensi’s resonant woods with two of Vancouver’s most respected musicians, Marina Hasselberg cello, Kenton Loewen drums and Ucluelet based video artists Nicolas Teichrob. MAGIK plays within a multi-layered, live electro acoustic surround sound-space among flat audio panels of hand cut West Coast Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce and Pacific Maple. The panels serve both as wooden resonators and diffusers, becoming the medium of our written and improvised soundscapes.

Sound become here indivisible from space, and grows in that relationship as firmly rooted in the material word: the contingencies and the context of each performative space and the poietic analogies. Music and sound become resonance, not only metaphorically but as the very power, force, intensity and becoming of which it is composed. In this regard, the diffusion system is a wonderful instrument to create and support that kind of sonic energy and experience. This project shares ideas and reflections about current artistic practices, and a possible vision where contemporary art and creativity “must occupy the commensurate fields and forms of action, and seek production processes that do not isolate art from life but instead influence life”. (Rudolf Frieling)

This seems essential both for the activation of a collective vision and for fostering higher level of impact and engagement within the community that we operate in and support.

MAGIK-Info.pdf

The audio resonators used in this project are built using large Western Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce and Pacific Coast Maple boards reclaimed from discarded piles of wood in mill operations and drifting ocean logs on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. After being sliced and smoothly shaped, they are planed and sanded to thin them down to thickness ranging between 2/16”and 1/4” and finally mounted on a stabilizer wood stand. An amplifier drives the sound into audio transducers applied to the rear of each panel, exciting the wood boards and transforming their surface into a distributed-mode loudspeaker (DML). In this way the audio is approaching an omnidirectional presence in the way the sound from the wood panels is dispersed evenly in all directions. The diffused radiation patterns of all frequencies created on the wood panels expands the audio source. Sound then propagates through the wood in the most liberated and natural way while becoming omnidirectional in the far field. The diffused sound is stunningly beautiful and softly filtered by the smooth quality of Red Cedar and Sitka Spruce or the brighter resonating quality of Maple, which adds to the uncanny character of their physical and sculptural presence.