Description | As the designer describes:
The Deerhorn Project investigates invisible fields which surround architectural objects in the space. It is inspired by the question, "what is a museum of the invisible like?" The deerhorn antenna is a metaphor for other kinds of invisible fields- political, psycho-geographical, subterranean, esoteric, and aesthetic.
The Deerhorn Installation shall utilize any number of Deerhorn circuits, which sonify movement in space. These circuits consist of two radio oscillators, a Phase Locked Loop circuit, and a two channel audio synthesizer. Each circuit generates two tones representing visitors' complementary approach to and withdrawal from the antenna. These antennae shall be crafted from easily resourced material such as aluminum cans. The body of each circuit shall be encased in fabric, carved wood, or other site-specific materials, or left suspended in the air. The circuits are low-power, operable from Solar Panels, and able to cross-modulate to create more "animalistic" sounds.
The design of the Deerhorn circuit has evolved much since it was first created to answer Clara Rockmore's original complaint with the Theremin: "Can there be more than one pitch?". Lev Theremin responded that one would need more than two arms, but the Deerhorn makes this possible by extracting gestural information from the radio fields and using it to control pitch and envelope. In fact the first Deerhorns used the same heterodyne as the Theremin, adding additional control circuitry. Several revisions were built as paper circuits until the design became formalized, eschewing the simple heterodyne and instead using a PLL-type detector for enhanced stability. Currently, in workshops, the Deerhorn circuit is assembled on a fiberglass circuit board, avoiding the precarious step of building delicate paper circuits.
The naming of this project Deerhorn, implies the idea of "wild". In fact in can create very wild, untamed sounds as an analog synthesizer, and we will further develop "the wild sound" by inter-modulating Deerhorn circuits within the organ. Finally the pure synthetic tones may become somewhat like a giant organic flock of deer within the space, responding to the humans that visit it.
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