PARTICIPATION
For Want of a Drummer
Servo and solenoid-driven mallets strike drumheads at threshold velocities as amplifiers feed signals back into the membranes themselves, blurring the boundary between excitation and response, instrument and player. The resulting system of feedback throbs and shrieks flutter, drift and settle into fluctuating and emergent standing waves.
The system explores duration, decay, and the physics of vibrating bodies pushed toward (and falling into) instability. Automation moves toward arhythmic activity and exploration of acoustic phenomena. Audience intervention via accessible control and input mechanisms destabilizes automated processes, becoming another unpredictable force in an already unstable acoustic system.
Simon Ray (born 1982, Sydney, Australia) has worked in sound-based performance and recording since 2010. Focusing largely on acoustic and electronic feedback, Ray uses self-built and modified instruments ranging from resonating drums and robotic percussion to broken effects units, modular synthesizers, and game controllers.
Ray has performed and recorded in such groups as Panto Collapsar, TSSSR, and Aporrheta, and contributed sound elements to numerous art installations and films. Recent releases include I Keep Your Secrets (2024), Roman Shades (with Panto Collapsar and Cyrus Pireh, 2024) and a collaboration with Louis Cohen and Kern Haug of Los Angeles Office of Improvisation (2024).
Artist Location: Long Beach, CA
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