HardDisko by Valentina Vuksic
Harddisko is an installation piece dealing with raw computer sounds. Rhythmic noises are evolving from sixteen hard drives, which are orchestrated through simple power circuits. By cutting the harddisk's power in varying sequences and amplifying the peculiar sound characteristics of each drive, an unpredictable acoustic and visual interplay is taking place.
Defective hard disks are collected from different PC shops, companies and institutions in the exhibition's local area. Each hard drive's casing is being removed and a special sound pickup is mounted on the drive's read head and connected to a sound mixer.
As soon as a drive recieves power, it conducts an initialization procedure with the heads moving in a specific pattern and generating sounds. These patterns vary throughout different manufactors, models, production series, firmware versions and the disk's history. The drives of the exhibit are placed within several individually controllable power circuits using interval switched power supplies.
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Harddisko is an installation made by Valentina Vuksic (a Media Art student at the Zurich University of Design and Arts), focused on what is really at the core of any computer music discourse: the raw PC sounds produced by the hard disk's heart. The project is based on getting for free some flawed hard disks, produced by different producers and with different characteristics. The supply is made in the area where the installation is built (even digging in electronic waste). Then the hard disk's cases are removed and a special pickup is mounted on the drive's head, connected to a sound mixer. As soon as the hard disks are plugged to the electricity the head starts to generates sounds, because of the start up procedure basic required movements. The requirement that every hard disk is noticeably different from the others (different producers, models, firmware versions, etc. etc.) guarantees a surprising diversity of sounds. It's a diversity that naturally fascinates in the same way a work made by the most different musical instruments does: everyone with its own peculiar sound specificity, everyone with its own story to tell. The conductor of this futuristic orchestra holds a switch (instead of the classic stick) with which he plugs or unplugs each disk, embodying the same On/Off logic of any computer process.
Vito Campanelli, Neural Magazine
(printsize image: http://www.piksel.no/pwiki/schikaneder7.jpg )
