Oddenky/Rrhizzzomess

2024, Diploma thesis, Univesity of West Bohemia, Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Arts and Design

Exploration of the interfaces between ceramics and sound led into acoustic research on the matter of porcelain with a particular emphasis on the resonant properties of the material.

Project considers loudspeaker design as a meaningful part of the connection between music and space.
The resonance of porcelain has been used as a fundamental principle in the design of an experimental electronic musical instrument. As a spatial loudspeaker system, it is equipped with specific acoustic filters due to the nature of the porcelain material.
The research was lead in collaboration with Acoustic Laboratories at University of West Bohemia under Ing. Oldrich Turecek, PhD.

Using porcelain plates, an instrument with a specific tuning is created. The underlying formal juxtaposition
of seemingly immaterial sound, thus opening up to speculation and fiction, and the supremely truth-like ceramics, or porcelain, reflects the philosophical framework of Christopher Cox’s sound materialism.
The installation’s references to the fragility of social order, the similarities and differences of individuals,
and the limits of personal expression and group coexistence allude to the phenomenon of resonance and its shift in meaning towards “connection“.

The research is built on the interfaces between ceramics and sound, their properties and philosophical reflections. It relies on a wild mix of science, postmodern analytical approaches, fabulations and metaphysical flights of fancy with which sound is surrounded and portrayed as the driver of everything. The installation
is an organism/cluster of bodies discerned and animated by its internal movement. It uses the resonant properties of ceramics and is set in motion electronically. Its visual and sonic persona explores the subjectivity of narrative and perception of a single event (reality). An analytical scientific understanding of the principles of sound and their application, versus the inconsistent and subjective effect of sound on the individual
is the initiating moment of the work.

I was irresistibly drawn to the paradox of synchronous understandings of the essence of the thing (nitty gritty) simultaneously juxtaposed in stark contrast. The work delves into conflicting ways of perceiving and thinking about sound. By connecting with the material, it is given spatial determinations, properties, and blurred boundaries. The installation synthetically connects two sensory actions, the distanced senses of sight and hearing. Through them visitor is invited into an organism with unknown laws. Is it subject to the laws of nature? This work does not have firm scientific parameters and the research/creation deals with affects, illogic and intuition. They accept them as supremely beneficial plug-ins for western culture.

Full thesis is accesible here.