Wave Harmonies
engages the audience - individual interactor or group of participants - in
the creation and manipulation of waveforms displayed as Lissajous figures.
Lissajous figures are graphic representations of the interaction of two periodic
waveforms. A figure is constructed on the screen by modulating the position
of a point in space both horizontally and vertically. If frequencies are equal
to or multiples of one another, they produce visual harmonics resulting in
organized patterns. In our interpretation of this principle, the audience
uses colored cards to control the horizontal and vertical motion of a point
moving on a screen.
A secondary but no less interesting characteristic of the work is its social
aspect. Depending upon one's distance from the camera/screen, a single participant
may be able to fill the screen with a color, and thus assume full responsibility
for the patterns created, or participants may work together to achieve the
same level of control (exerted by amount of each color in the camera's view),
thus interacting with one another.
Wave Harmonies was originally commissioned (under the title Waiting in Line) by the Museum of Science
and Industry for their summer 2003 performance/installation series Experiments
in Science and Art.
It
was exhibited at Northwestern University, 5/04, in the Performing the
Imagination festival.