Beat Box. Box of rhythms
Diego Paonessa (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1970). He lives and works in Barcelona. Paonessa holds a BA in Fine Arts from the National University Institute of Art in Buenos Aires and completed the doctoral programme “Painting in the digital age” at the University of Barcelona. He was awarded a grant for artistic creation from the Guasch Coranty Foundation and the Carta Blanca grant from FAD. His projects focus on exploring the relationships between technical production and artistic production and develop this idea based on two areas of interest: on the one hand, procedures, processes and mechanisms of production and, on the other, the social configuration of technology, intervention, tools and applications. Such activity is combined with design projects specialised in interface interaction and creation. He is currently a member of Zona-De, an online production, collaboration and dissemination platform based on audio files.
The term “beatboxing” is used to denote a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of producing beats, rhythms and musical sounds using the body. It has been made known mainly through the media presence of musicians and actors that employ this technique.
Beat Box is an installation that turns Espai Cub into a musical instrument, a drum machine or beat box. The very walls of the space act as a soundboard, hit by a series of small electromagnetic hammers that surround both the inside and outside of the cube, forming a loop.
The rhythms or loops, put together especially for the project, are activated and mixed at random thanks to a sensor located inside the cube, which acts in response to the presence and activity of users on the inside, operating exclusively for them and according to them.
The installation is programmed with the Arduino microcontroller, a key tool in the development of experimental interactive technologies, given the myriad uses and applications of its programming system, thereby allowing a specific development for each mechanism.
In keeping with the artistic exploration of Diego Paonessa, Beat Box is an instrument based on the digital control device (Arduino). However, the timbre and the sonority shall emerge from a physical material (the cube), building bridges between analog and digital technology, between the internal complexities intrinsic to mechanics and electronics and their capacity for direct connection with the individual.
The project is part of a study currently underway that researches sound production on the basis of everyday objects and specific spaces. This, its second edition, ties in with the project recently carried out during the Hangar-CORE Labs art residency in Beijing, a_sweet_loop. Said project comprised the development and construction of a ceramic musical instrument controlled by a sequencer and programmed with Arduino. In turn, this project continues the research undertaken by the Pantone 802 project by ferranElOtro Studio for the Caja Madrid Espai Cultural, which put forward a “translation” of four sound pieces in flashing lights.
From taking measurements and developing precise mathematical calculations to spatial and sound architecture, and mechanical installation, electronic programming and musical composition in-between, Beat Box approaches Espai Cub like a re-production space. A setting that reflects its social use status by way of a mechanical and direct response, proposing, on the basis of the action-reaction loop with the user, all-embracing poetics, the product of a real symbiosis between sensoriality, technology, humanity and cultural references.
Links
Diego Paonessa: http://diegopaonessa.net
Colaborators