Caroline Song – Looking Outwards 10 – Computer Music

The installation of sound art that I will be looking at this week is called “Cycling Wheel“ by Keith Lam, Seth Hon, and Alex Lai, made in 2017.

This piece of art was inspired from the Bicycle Wheel piece made by Marcel Duchamp. It borrows the concept from Duchamp and redesigns it as an interactive and performative installation piece.

I was attracted to this project because of the way it reimagines something as simple as a bicycle wheel (which is an object that is commonly known), into an interactive art piece that brings dynamic motion through light and sound to this static object. It takes the bicycle wheel and allows the audience to imagine it when it actually is functioning through an entire bicycle. Furthermore, it takes the experience of biking one step further by introducing sound and light into the mechanics, which is not the typical way you experience biking. The most intriguing thing about this piece is how the artists have managed to reimagine such a well-known activity that most people experience into something new, which shows their artistic sensibilities coming out in their want to allow their audience to experience a sensation that they’ve been familiar with in a new way, using computational art instead of traditional art.

The algorithms that the artists seem to have used include “tailor made control panel software”. This is through the open source programming language, Processing. They also have used programs like Arduino, as well as using different units in order to control different areas of the piece, such as the control of the music, the control of the light beams, and the control of the LED strips.