Out of Hand, by Tom Allum

Out of Hand

by Tom Allum

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shipping out on or around June 2, 2024

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1.	Ø 07:09 video
2.	Dust & Artefacts 03:11	info
3.	Motor 2 01:51	info
4.	Cloudmaker 10:15	info

about

Out of Hand is an installation of drawing implements animated by sound.

This album was recorded live at Old Customs House, Walyalup / Fremantle using a multichannel speaker set up rigged with drawing implements.

The project is a collaboration between sound artist, Tom Allum, and architect, Beth George. Over the duration of the exhibition, Allum and George work with mark-making machines to amass a body of drawings. Walking, clashing, entangling, shuddering, looping, and dancing to a vibrational and site-responsive score, the implements, made of everyday componentry and found objects, are hypnotic to watch. Like wayward creatures, they are undisciplined and unpredictable. Shifts in the sound score that moves them, loss of media to the page, gravity, air movement, and stretching of the suspension systems result in constant transformations. The machines are not autonomous—while the artists remain at arm’s length from the drawings, the sound inputs and physical infrastructures require constant tuning in an unwieldy choreography of senses, bodies, and media. In an ever-changing residency, no drawing can be made twice.

Tom Allum is a sound designer based in Koorabup WA.
Beth George is an architect and Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia’s School of Design.

The Sound Design Process:
Inputs are created using wave-table synthesis (ASM Hydrasynth). We refer to these as ‘motor sounds’, concerned with oscillation. These sounds vibrate the speaker cones, which are wired in out-of-phase pairs, mobilising the drawing implements. At higher volumes, sound waves are visible in the suspension wires. A vintage sampler (SP404SX) provides a tunable, low frequency sine wave to resist gravity and mark the page.

After a run of drawings are hung, the images are scanned and fed into an image-spectrogram translation tool which interprets the image as if it were a digital audio waveform. These translations can be both heard and seen. We refer to these as second generation sound inputs.

At this point, a soundscape begins to appear and additional layers of percussion, sub tone and harmony are added using samplers (OP-Z, SP404mkii). A stereo microphone pair is installed to capture the speaker jams and these compositions are released for sharing.

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Special thanks to Artsource, in particular Bennett Miller, Peter Grant, and Elizabeth Millar, and to the UWA School of Design. Thanks also to Dan McCabe, Leonie Matthews Peter Hill, and Emerald Wise.

credits

released January 28, 2024

Live audio composition by Tom Allum
Drawing implements by Beth George
Album mix by Tom Allum
Album cover by Dan McCabe

Drawings were made with the following instruments: The Bellman, Big Bell, Cloudmaker, Pas de Deux, Feather Walkers, Wind Dancer, Slow Geology and The Bellman II.

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Tom Allum Denmark, Australia

sound design

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