Text Tones

Text Tones is an installation consisting of six narrow white, painted bases on top of which aluminum tubes are mounted, each struck by a pair of small hammers installed below. Mounted on the first base is a tube of a specific length; when struck by a gong, the internal column of air vibrates at the same frequency as the tube itself.

Stephan von Huene called this the “absolute pitch” (here, he was stimulated by the story of Ling Lun, who was commissioned by the ruler Huang-Di to cut a piece of bamboo whose length would fix the suitable basic tone of the Chinese musical system).

In relation to the first piece, the pairs of tubes mounted on the other bases are either shortened or lengthened in such a way that two octaves are segmented into five intervals. The ambient noises of the exhibition space, i.e. voices, closing doors, etc., are taken up by a microphone, stored, and separated into an analog and a digital signal. These signals, which are stored on audio tape, are then played back by the sculpture.