Displacement
During my last year at Brown University, I created a video performance art piece in which the same video clip was re-recorded several times. As a result, the images became progressively more distorted. The piece sparked an interest in digital artifacts through re-recording, and I wanted to find a way to isolate, exaggerate, and develop them.
I attempted to apply this concept to audio, and Displacement is the result. Using SPEAR, I analyzed the harmonic spectra of long synthesizer tones, a melodica, and a few sounds produced by water. Because digitization is ultimately an approximation, the samples were full of artifacts, especially in the higher frequencies and beyond the range of human hearing. I would usually eliminate the fundamental frequency, along with any other strong partials, and rearrange the remaining bands (hence the title). I eventually compiled a bank of diverse musical gestures, which became the component parts of the final work.
Just as the video piece drew attention to things one wouldn’t normally notice, Displacement draws attention to spectral content which is always present, but otherwise inaudible.
See a screenshot of the SPEAR file
Hear the piece: