MECHANISM/ Norwich University for the Arts, UK 2024/25
Mechanism is a responsive sound/light/kinetic artwork suspended above the Project Studio in the historic Banking Hall of Bank Plain at Norwich University of the Arts. The structure is close to 7 metres in diameter and comprises an aluminium circular form that supports eleven smaller rings strapped to the truss. Ten of these smaller rings support LED lights, some of these have amber cast cones, counterbalanced like musical notes on the structure. Mounted above the lights are acrylic dichroic discs which introduce an ongoing kinetic element within the artwork. As they pivot back and forth, driven by individual miniature motors, they reflect and refract creating an ever-changing field, a colourised acoustic. As a counterpoint, the eleventh ring is a silver reflective inflated form enveloping the truss, introducing a static element within the installation.
This industrial kaleidoscopic chandelier is fed data of everyday sounds collected from outside the building by network-enabled directional microphones. A shifting live stream of audio information is converted into a continuous data sequence, never predetermined, always regenerating, constantly seeking new input while hovering in the Banking Hall. The rhythms and acoustic pulses of the city outside become part of a cyclical story of light, played out each day. This dialogue between art and architecture, external and internal space, sound and light, elements of inhabitation, performance, and monumentality converge to prompt reflection on relationships between the other-than-human world and the human-made environment.
Manufacture and growth, pattern and irregularity, are explored as the structure’s elements suggest a fractal in development, the large main structure being echoed at the smaller levels. If the lights suggest buds or flowers, and the inflated form may be read as an unopened section, the suspended complex presents a hybrid of bio-mechanic associations. The work's theatrical qualities extend the play between these realms, inviting contemplation on ephemerality and the interconnection between humans and their surroundings.
Creating this installation in which sound matter becomes re-defined through an aesthetic and metaphysical art machine that defies linguistic representational models, Mechanism channels composer Edgar Varèse’s dream of conjuring voices in the sky. It is as if through magic, invisible hands turn on and off the knobs of fantastic radios, visually filling space, crisscrossing, overlapping, piercing each other, splitting up, superimposing, repulsing each other, colliding, crashing. 1
The physical framework of Mechanism becomes a collective structure designed to host a series of experiments and explorations throughout the project's timeline. Situated at the heart of Norwich University of the Arts, Bank Plain is a Grade II listed building built in 1926. With its prominent position and heritage within the city, Bank Plain has witnessed a century of change. Now, in a new chapter, this landmark structure serves as the setting for Kearney’s Mechanism which serves as a table of ideas that aims to integrate industrial materials with the new contemporary use of the building, bridging the gap between the building’s past and its new future role within the University.
1. Cited in Henry Miller, “With Edgar Varèse in the Gobi Desert,” in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (New York: New Directions, 1945), 163–78
Work produced with support from electronic engineer/software designer Erik Kearney.
