Light Instrument
The aptly named Light Instrument (2007) is one of several instruments built by Ross Manning over the past couple of years that use light as a means for triggering and shaping sounds.
Manning’s instrument building is a kind of running experimentation – where the act of building and performance overlap, as ideas, objects, forms, and sounds emerge, play out, bounce around the room, fall on the floor, then wind up in a different instrument tomorrow. A kind of flirtation with technical and musical ideas, full of accident, risk and chance. As Manning describes it ‘I really like the idea of making a piece of music real-time. And having a tangible object to perform with.’
Light Instrument, like all of Manning’s instruments, is fueled by the use of low-budget, lo-fi, everyday materials, devices, and components. Almost everything is salvaged from some other instrument, device or appliance, and repurposed countless times into new instrument forms. It’s normal to see the same component reappear across several instruments over the course of a year or two. Manning explains ‘… my instruments are built quickly with whatever materials are at hand, there can be several instruments built around the same idea, none of which ever really get out of the prototype stage because they get butchered for parts for other things that interest me more at the time.’
The version of the Light Instrument I have in front of me (about the second or third incarnation and counting) uses two cheap plastic fans – the type you’d put on your desk for a week until they blew-out with a puff of smoke and that burnt electric smell. The two fans are gaff-taped together, back to back, with their fans facing outwards in opposite directions. Taped between the fans is a light globe, radiating light through the whole instrument – blocked only by the fan blades.
Two small light sensors (resistors) are attached to the end of wire stalks (stiff coat-hanger wire by the looks of it), each sensor facing in toward one of the fans and the central light source. The light sensors are each connected to salvaged line-amp circuits – ripped out of some old computer speakers. To produce sounds Manning bent the circuits to feedback on themselves. The light sensors, acting as a type of resistor within the electronic circuit, regulate the amount of resistance and therefore level of feedback, depending on the intensity of light being picked up. In other words, the sensors detect fluctuations in light intensity, which effects the feedback sounds being produced by the circuit. In this version of the instrument, the intensity of light effects the volume and pitch of the sound.
As with many of Manning’s instruments, the Light Instrument could be presented as a fully automated instrument playing by itself, however more often than not Manning plays his instruments live. To play the Light Instrument Manning can switch the fans on and off to produce rhythmic sequences as the fan blades intermittently block the light source from the sensor. Various cardboard cut-outs [see image] are taped onto the fans to alter the amount and pattern of light being blocked as the fan blades rotate, and therefore creating different rhythmic patterns. Blades can be slowly rotated manually or the fan switched on for a complete blur of sound.
The sensors stalks can also be moved back and forth from the light source to slowly change pitch and volume. Abruptly twanging the stalk will create a strong vibrato effect. Pitch can also be adjusted via a pot (knob) on the circuit boards, with in-line equalisation used to further alter the instrument’s tone.
Manning performed with the Light Instrument on several occasions and locations during 2007. Parts of the instrument have since been carved up and incorporated into new instruments.
More instruments by Ross Manning coming very soon.
Ross Manning’s instruments will be the feature for Issue 01 of the sound HOUNDS zine – also coming very soon.
