Think of a music box, and an ornate item you can hold with two hands probably comes to mind. That's decidedly not the case for a new installation by artist Niklas Roy. Called Music Construction Machine, Roy's music box is a lot larger and would be hard to miss in its location at the Goethe-Institut Pop Up Pavillion in Wroclaw, Poland.Roy's generative installation, in fact, is so large that he can fit actual musical instruments inside as part of its components, including an electric guitar, a keyboard, and a drum kit. Members of the public turn a hand crank to set the machine in motion, and watch as the mechanical hardware—ropes, pulleys, springs, and weights—instigates an algorithm that produces sounds from the intricate inner workings.
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This also ensues that, unlike a standard music box, the melodies will always be producing different beats and tones. "Although the mechanisms follow a simple inherent logic, which determines the sequence of tones that will be played, the overall behavior of the system is so complex that the sequence appears to be unpredictable for a listener," notes Roy. "The result is a melody which is sometimes harmonic, sometimes not, but it definitely has a lot of variation."
GIF by Niklas Roy (via)Because of all those moving parts, though, what it lacks in harmony, it makes up for in visuals, giving the piece a kinetic sculptural quality. Plus, it seems like Roy has achieved what he set out to do in terms of the audio: in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Roy says that he was going for a sound that was somewhere between a “drunk punk band and an avant-garde trio," but now he thinks the machine is "much more like the latter.""Of course many of the melodies that the machine produces don’t sound beautiful by traditional standards," he continues in a blog post. "One might even question if the sound that is generated by the machine can be regarded as music at all. But then again—where exactly is the borderline between noise and music? I’m not able to answer this question! But if someone cranks long enough, eventually musical structures will appear, which might match the operator’s taste perfectly. It’s just a matter of patience and careful listening."
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GIF by Niklas Roy (via)Because of all those moving parts, though, what it lacks in harmony, it makes up for in visuals, giving the piece a kinetic sculptural quality. Plus, it seems like Roy has achieved what he set out to do in terms of the audio: in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Roy says that he was going for a sound that was somewhere between a “drunk punk band and an avant-garde trio," but now he thinks the machine is "much more like the latter.""Of course many of the melodies that the machine produces don’t sound beautiful by traditional standards," he continues in a blog post. "One might even question if the sound that is generated by the machine can be regarded as music at all. But then again—where exactly is the borderline between noise and music? I’m not able to answer this question! But if someone cranks long enough, eventually musical structures will appear, which might match the operator’s taste perfectly. It’s just a matter of patience and careful listening."
Visit Niklas Roy's website here.RelatedA 2,000-Marble Instrument Sounds Like a Synth for the ApocalypseScore an Entire Film on This Tiny Little Music BoxThe ‘Music Box for the Digital Era’ Is Back and Better Than Ever
