when Huygens met a ballerina

Five metronomes, video projection, laptop running Max/MSP/Jitter software.

This work was commissioned as part of a series of events taking place at the Kunstsammlung Nord-Rhein Westfalen K21 in Dusseldorf during October 2019. The theme for these events focused on the notion of ‘sonification’, defined as the use of non-verbal audio to convey data or information.

I chose to work with metronomes, a mechanical device used in music training to identify and mark time periods; dividing durations of time into musical tempi.

In my work, the movement of the metronomes is tracked by the computer and drives the audio and visual material.

Metronomes are in fact pendulums, and a key part of this work traces it roots back to the Enlightenment and to the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who is credited as being the first theoretical physicist, and the inventor of the pendulum clock.

Huygens noticed that pendulum clocks, if placed on the same wall, could eventually synchronise their movements. When oscillating systems have a way to share energy in this way they are said to be ‘coupled’.

This ‘coupling’ and ‘uncoupling’ becomes a central structural aspect of my work: the first section of this pieces uses uncoupled systems in which the metronomes fragment or shatter both sound and image. The second section allows the metronomes to couple, and drive the audio-visual material in synchronisation.

Unfortunately due to Covid-19 it has not been possible to create high quality media of this work at this time.