Traction Sub Bass for a new project

This week I managed to get to Manchester Met. University to meet with Dr Toby Heys (Digital Technologies Research Fellow, Research Centre, MIRIAD, Manchester School of Art) and begin work on the Furniture Music Project (working title).

The project has been developed by Toby and will start with a sound installation at the LEVEL Centre on the 29th of April 2017. Furniture Music is based around creating sound at the edge of, and just beyond, our (human) sensory perception. To do this Toby has been working with some bespoke speakers and had just taken delivery of a TRACTION Sub Bass - see images below.

Toby (Left) & Myself (Right) with the Traction SUB

 

TRACTION Sound LTD are based in Brighton and have developed this SUB specifically for the Furniture Music Project.  It does not work in the same way as normal speaker - instead of using a magnet and coil it makes use of a piston to move the large plastic diaphragm. This means it can move a lot of air and should be capable of producing sound at 10Hz  - a sound you will feel rather than hear. Furniture Music is a research project  - developing new compositions using sound as a sense and will explore our reactions to sound at the very edge of our perception. These new works will make use of low frequency and very high frequency sound. It is envisaged that it will make people feel uncomfortable and slightly stressed and this will be an important part of the experience. Toby is currently working to build a set of speakers for the installation at LEVEL. These will be housed in purpose built chairs and objects - each making sounds at the edge of the limits of human hearing. 

I will post more about this project as it develops over the next three months.