Dissonant Particles video

Video on DVD with surround sound, duration 7 mins 3 secs (2004/5)

The first version of the piece, made in November 2004, had a stereo soundtrack. In March 2005 I changed the video slightly and made a surround soundtrack.)

Program note

Dissonant Particles is an abstract animation.

Psychoacoustic experiments have indicated that when two pure sine tones are played simultaneously, they will sound most dissonant when they are around a semitone apart in pitch. In Dissonant Particles, each particle emits a sine tone. The dissonance between particles acts as a repulsive force which pushes them apart, both in position and in pitch. There is also a long-range (“cosmological”) attractive force that prevents the particles from flying off to infinity.

The particles pulsate and slowly evaporate; both of these processes affect the way they "feel" the forces acting on them. The colour of a particle indicates pitch: red for low pitches, green for intermediate, and blue for high. The camera tracks one particle, which is always shown in the centre of the screen.

Still images

Click on an image for a larger version

Video (extract)

The original has surround sound.

Further information

More information, and two more pictures (PDF, 290 Kbyte)

Performances, etc

Sydney Eclectic Composers Society concert "eclectic:bit", Old Darlington School, University of Sydney, 17th November 2004;
Selected for the "777 Seconds" exhibition at the Memory Grid, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, Melbourne. Launched: 17th March 2005. Screenings: 22nd March 2005 - 31st May 2005.
Part of Sydney Conservatorium's contribution to the Discovery After Dark event, 2nd April 2005.
e)scapes (curated by Gail Priest), Medium Rare Gallery, Redfern, Sydney, 23rd June 2005.
Australasian Computer Music Conference, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 10th July 2005.
"Live Wires" electroacoustic concert, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 31st August 2005.
Spac{v}e series at Electrofringe, Newcastle, NSW, 2 October 2005.
In the art show for the Third Iteration conference, Monash University, Melbourne, November 30th to December 2nd 2005.
Accepted for the Generative Art 2005 conference in Milan, 14-17 December 2005.
Awarded a Mención Especial in the section Paisajes Sonoros of the II Muestra Monográfica de Media Art, part of the fifth Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Manizales, Colombia, 18th to 21st April, 2006.
Played in the 2007 Visual Music Marathon, at Northeastern University, Boston on 28th April 2007. The event was part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival.
Shown as part of the DVD Video By Numbers by Tape Projects at the 2007 Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, October 2007 to February 2008.
Included in the art show for the 2008 International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics, Lisbon, Portugal, 18th to 20th June 2008.
Played at the reprise of the Visual Music Marathon at the Visual Arts Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, New York City, 11th April 2009.
Played at the Visual/Music Night, Loop Bar, 23 Meyers Place, Melbourne, 5th October 2011.
Shown in the Projection Window of the Art Gallery of Ballarat, 5th to 27th January, 2012.

Dissonant Particles is on the Video By Numbers DVD/Zine by Tape Projects, Issue 1 (2007).

This work by Gordon Monro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

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