The real sound of wood

Today looking for input for a new project related to musical instruments i found what i think is a big leap forward to give musicians in the search for a personal sound an alternative to electronics. This a MIT student that device a way to sense the specific oscillations of the wood of the guitar. So, if you change the soundboard of the guitar (as you do with the chameleon guitar) you change the sound of it. As an extra, the soundboard becomes a platform for experimentation with different materials like water, oil or whatever you want to put inside the special container under a modified soundboard.

via: http://buildingtheergonomicguitar.com/2009/03/mit-chameleon-guitar.html

From Art to Science...and back (Reuben Margolin's kinetic sculptures)

First of all, if it is anyone real follow this blog i would like to apologize me for the big time window between this post and the previous one. Now, i find this excelent example of the crossover between art and science. Reuben Margolin translate the physics of waves into the language of art with amazing results, big and complex instalations waving smoothly as a light water perturbation or as the peculiar gait of the caterpillar.

The crossing between Art and Science it's not new, but it is somehow one of the most interesting and revolutionary paths that the Arts is following these days. In the same field of kinetic sculpture we can find the amazing beach animals by Theo Hansen, but also we can count the phylosophical questioning made through hightech-interfaces by Natalie jeremijenko who put in evidence the nature of our relationships with other people, animals, the cities, and so on.

There is a lot of people working now in this area, bringing the concepts of science and using the new technologys to make some reflections about the world on what we live, and they are making amazing things. But also there is a few who follow the opposite path, from science to art, and they are discovering the big power who lies behind the human expression and how these knowledge -intuitive and irrational as usually is - can hold the keys of one of the most complex structures, the human behaviour.

amazing

Martin Puryear, Monomaterial cultural explorations

http://video.pbs.org/video/1237794459#

Recently i've came to know the sculptor Martin Puryear (1941), he catch my atention with his wooden sculptures who resembles in a very subtle way some ''cultural bags'', objects that carry representative shapes and shades of an past moment in history, like a Wooden wheel or a ladder.

Another thing that realy grab me was the austerity of his work. Almost all his pieces are built in only one material, this can be stone or metal but above all wood. This artist fill spaces with objects that are wonderfully crafted in wood in wich ones you can recognize the most traditional techniques of woodworking. The relation with cabinet-making it's obvious in every joint. The cultural explotarion of his work goes through the objects into techniques, and put the ancient knowledge of woodworking into the lenguage of modern Art.

What i like of Puryear? the way he relates deeply with the material, the cultural and simbolic awareness of the comun objects. An also the way that he translate his wooden shapes into other materials.