Sydney Salamy: Looking Outwards-10

Apparatum is a piece made by PanGenerator, a musical group consisting of Krzysztof Goliński, Jakub Koźniewski, Piotr Barszczewski, and Krzysztof Cybulski, and was created in 2018. The group drew inspiration from the Pilish Radio Experimental Studio, which was one of the first studios to start producing electrostatic music. So while there is a digital interface, the apparatus is very old-fashioned looking and emits only analogue sound.

I really like the old aesthetic the group is trying to pull off with this installation. It’s the first thing that really stands out about it. I like this because it’s pleasing to look at and because there obviously isn’t a lot like it currently. I also really like how there was a mix of the old and the new. It wasn’t simply a remake of an old technology, the group decided to incorporate modern tech into an older styled model, resulting in a old looking apparatus with a digitally interactive interface. I like this since it takes the best parts of two different things to create an almost different invention.

While the piece may be heavily influenced by an older aesthetic, it has modern electronic aspects to it as well. To create the electronic interface, the group used the software electron (node.js). The microcontroller elements are c running on Teensy 3.2. Teensy 3.2 is also used for the hardware. 

Looking at their website, it is clear they have a certain aesthetic they are trying to pull off. The website is a sleek black and white, and many of their photos are in black and white as well.  The site almost looks like that for a newspaper. They seem to be going for an old fashioned but also futuristic look, if that’s possible, the color scheme giving off the old-timey vibe with the sleekness and use of geometric shapes in their photos giving the site a futuristic feel. This seems to be reflected well in Apparatum.