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the Door to Freedom

The Door to Freedom is an interactive kinetic sound installation. The installation has been made as an integral part of my 2015 solo exhibition Verschanste Klanken at Fort Maarssenveen . The installation is inspired by the erosive materials that I encountered at Fort Maarssenveen. I made sound recordings and photographs of this erosion and incorporated them into aspects of the installation.

I selected 16 photos, printed on foam photo panels and mounted them on electric motors. With this principle I made a 4x4 grid of which each motorised photo panel could be controlled separately. Visually, the fast rotation of the photo panels resulted in colorfull tree disc-like patterns.

I loaded the field recordings of squeaky fortress doors in into self-programmed software for sound transformation. This software enabled me to make chords with the recordings of the squeaky doors.

Then I hung a small door in the room of the installation. The door was meant to be the main interaction mechanisme. I monitored the opening angle of the door with a sensor. I used the angle variable to bring the installation to life. Every time the door was opened, a new rotation pattern was generated with the different motorised panels. Simultaneously with the spinning of the photo panels, the chords that are built up from the recordings of the squeaky doors are created. 

Once every few times when the door was closed again, all panels were brought into rotation via a cellular automata pattern. Sometimes this took a long time some times not, depending on the way the cellular automate pattern evolved. Along with this sequence I made a sound design based on the pulse width modulation frequency that was audible in the electric motors. I took that frequency and used it on a bunch of oscillators that where slightly out of tune.

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