Pendulum Video

Pendulum Video is a take on the Steve Reich piece Pendulum Music.

In Pendulum Music, there are 4 speakers on the floor and 4 mics are suspended high above them. The mics are hooked directly into the speakers and have their volume adjusted so they feedback when the mic is directly in front of the speaker. A performance of the piece consists of having 4 people lift the mics and drop them in unison. They swing and create a feedback tone, but because they are slightly out of phase with eachother, a very complex sound starts to come out of the whole setup. When the sound and mics have settled, the speakers are then turned off and the piece is over.

I had been interested in the idea of making ‘musical’ compositions for visual pieces and thought that Reich’s piece would be a good starting point. For my piece, due to budget, I had to limit my setup to just one camera and one monitor and had to do multiple takes. The camera was hung from a 20ft ceiling in EMPAC. Below is glitchy a sort of ‘making of’ video that Kyle made while he helped me out.