Words and images about the work from Ben and Oscar:
Ben Harding: Provisionally the work will be based around a digital model of a Technics record player cartridge, which I began working on a few months ago but has been shelved until recently when I began to reconsider my medium whilst producing the work for my degree show.
A simple animation will illustrate the cartridge oscillating slowly, incrementally on the screen of a portable television, which will serve both as a monitor and display case for the virtual object. It is expected that the image of the cartridge will jolt every 1.82 seconds (the amount of time that it takes for a record to complete a single rotation at 33 rpm). This glitch will infer a scratch in the surface of the record, causing the needle to jump backwards and creating a locked groove.
Oscar will produce the soundtrack for the animation - a short audio loop - which should be clearly audible on the outside of the window. This will, hopefully, be achieved through the use of a transducer speaker attached to the inside of the window, effectively turning the window itself into a speaker.
The work is site-specific and aims to address the context of attempting to communicate with the passer-by, the viewer who would not ordinarily enter the gallery.
Oscar Goldman, primarily a musician - and scientist - who builds analogue synthesisers in order to test scientific theories.
My synths are about feedback, once the feedback starts circulating it determines the sound. This is to simulate similar feedback processes in our universe. From subatomic particles to the solar system, emergent processes that create the life around us are based on feedback. This whole process is based on quantum uncertainty, a constant dynamic whose unstoppable chaotic motion has shaped us - and everything around us.
