Instruments
Chaos Bells
Designed to explore the impact of instrument size on musical performance and composition, Chaos Bells is a very large (2 metres wide and tall) instrument that features 20 gesturally performed pendulums. Chaos Bells' unique sound design, in which bell sounds can drone and become chaotic, is how it gained its name. A staccato tone is produced by striking or tapping the instrument. Tilting a pendulum produces a drone. When striking Chaos Bells, the timbre changes depending how hard you strike and whether you, for instance, play with hands, soft mallets or sticks resulting in sounds ranging from saccharine to unhinged.
How it Works
Chaos Bells' most unique engineering feature is its chaotic drone. The sound is created when 20 embedded accelerometers excite a modified Karplus-Strong synthesis algorithm. The pendulum tilt angle changes the Karplus-Strong algorithm feedback coefficient, thereby changing the drone decay and timbre. When tilted close to 90 degrees, the feedback coefficient becomes greater than 1 producing an unstable system: the drone grows over time, eventually becoming chaotic and distorted as it is clipped by the digital system, finally disintegrating into broadband noise. The result: synthetic bell drones that can be sweet, nasty or anywhere in between.
Chaos Bells has a growing list of artists adopting it to create original performances. To date, 11 musicians have composed original Chaos Bells repertoire.
Awards
— Guthman Musical Instrument Competition 2023 - Finalist
— Sound of the Year Awards 2021 'Best Innovation of a Sound Tool or Technique' - Highly Commended
Performances and Exhibitions
— Great Exhibition Road Festival, London June 2024
— Corsica Studios, London May 2023
— Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, Atlanta USA March 2023
— V&A Museum, 23-25 September 2022
— CHI 2022, New Orleans USA, 2 May 2022
— Sonorities Festival, Belfast, 8 April 2022
— Deliaphonic Festival, Coventry, 6 March 2022
— Supersonic Festival IWD, Birmingham, 5 March 2022
— Oram Awards, Online 9 December 2021
— Augmented Instruments Lab Concert, Online 23 November 2021 - watch here
— Chaos Theory, Online 20 September 2021
