LO: My Inspiration

One “creative technologies” project that really stands out to me is the Gravity Harps installation. The piece was commissioned by Icelandic musician Björk’s Biophilia tour, who wanted custom instruments for her studio album, requesting the help of Robot Music inventor Andy Cavatorta (who partnered with Pattern Studios for the electronics of the piece). The collaborative project involved mechanics, sound engineers, designers, and musicians and took one year to complete. The piece involves 11 harp strings attached to mechanical pendulums that use python code to formulate specific melodies that are played in succession of each swinging harp.

What I especially appreciate about this piece is how natural the integration with technology and music was undertaken. It’s always a risk to “overcompute” a creative practice within these types of projects, which undermine the beauty of arts based performances. However, the project reimagines how a traditional instrument can be computed in a way that makes one still appreciate the creative elements in its practice – e.g rhythm, timing, notes, etc. In context of the musician’s tour biophilia (which refers to humans’ tendency to seek connection with nature), the piece makes use of “natural” elements like physics and motion to create music. This project suggests ways to compute more instruments, possibly creating a machine based orchestra.

Source #1: Inventing Björk’s Gravity Harp, The New Yorker
Andrew Marantz