#UNRAVEL is a collection of devices making up a gallery-based, reactive sound installation, through which the audience will attempt to unravel the truth about The Narrator’s life through playing records from his collection.

At the heart of the installation is a vinyl record player and ten 7” records. Visitors to the gallery are encouraged to select a record from the collection and play it on the turntable. As soon as they drop the needle onto the vinyl the installation springs to life. The record player controls a series of acoustic musical instruments positioned throughout the gallery. These self-playing instruments soundtrack the story as the narrator recounts a memory from his life. Each 7” record represents a different memory, but unlike conventional vinyl recordings they sound different every time they are played. Just as a real narrator alters the way they tell a story depending on their mood, audience and context, the memories embodied in the installation will distort, evolve and warp depending on external influences: time, audience, opinion and pressure.

FOUND are currently artists-in-residence at Inspace, Edinburgh until 19 February 2012. We will be hosting free-entry public events every Thursday evening. To find out more info please visit: www.mediascot.org

#UNRAVEL will be unveiled to the public at SWG3 at the Glasgow International festival (20 April – 7 May 2012).

#UNRAVEL is supported by
Creative Scotland | New Media Scotland | The University of Edinburgh

www.unravelproject.com

A composition for plants, yangqin, bamboo robot and robotic chimes, Three Pieces is designed as a collaboration between robots, traditional instruments, and living things, housed in Victorian Palm House of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. A traditional Chinese dulcimer is played by a robot with many bamboo fingers while the surrounding foliage hides an ensemble of robotic chimes. Despite being separate individuals, the robots communicate and perform together. The robot performers are conducted by all the living things in the Palm House. The moisture content of the soil changes slowly as the plants absorb water, while on a much faster timescale, the temperature changes in the building as animals, including humans, move about. The installation detects this living presence in the Palm House and the music changes accordingly. The robots react to humans, but their mood alters with the plants.

FOUND were commissioned by Edinburgh’s Hogmanay to design a mass participation game for their first ever New Year Games which took place in and around Edinburgh’s Old Town on 1 January 2012. Situated in The Hub on Castlehill, our game was called Throw Things at FOUND and involved people throwing paper aeroplanes from a balcony at three instruments on stage. The object of the game was to activate all three instruments at once to trigger the chorus of the current song and move the game on to the next song. Players had fifteen minutes to try and complete all five songs.

thenewyeargames.com/the-games

Our latest sound installation, End Of Forgetting, was shown as part of the Material Rites group exhibition at the Royal Society of British Sculptors, London from 13 January – 11 February 2011. From 18 – 31 March 2011 the exhibition will tour to Inspace, Edinburgh.

The installation will remember every sound in the gallery. These can be accessed by turning the wheel. Over time, its memories will become confused. Every few minutes, the installation will play a brief snippet of the latest audio uploaded by anyone onto the internet at that moment. These will be added to its memories. You can also eavesdrop on its memories as it reposts them online through it’s twitter feed.

Download the catalogue here.

End of Forgetting was funded by an Alt-W research and development award with support from the University of Edinburgh.

FOUND were commissioned by the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in 2007 to build an ambitious interactive audio installation for the Edinburgh Festival. Full details of the Etiquette installation can be found on the project website.

The installation consisted of a table on which various boxes could be placed an moved around by members of the public. The choice of blocks and their location would determine music being played within a quadraphonic sound space. All the elements of the music that the table produced were recorded in the sculpture workshop and its grounds including some of the sounds of the table itself being constructed as well as ongoing work by other artists in the workshop.

In this video, Ziggy plays the table. Throughout the day, the “mood” of the table changes and along with it the types of sounds, music and tempo it plays. Here it is being quite relaxed… A free EP of music from the Etiquette project is available.

Visit the project’s own website here.