Spincycle is composed of two kinetic sound-sculptures-as-instruments, Mic Spin and Amp Spin, from The Instrument Project. For Le Mois Multi 2017, Avatar’s sound studio is used as a site to live-mix sound kinetically, spatially. Field recordings are played at low audio levels through hi-fi and low-fi speakers – studio monitors, turning guitar amplifiers, mobile phone speakers placed in resonant drinking glasses. The microphones, moving or still, are used to pick up and transmit to a sound system that in turn amplifies the sound. How this sound is then heard depends on a range of factors including microphone movement and placement, sound source amplitude, room or space resonance, etc.
The field recordings were originally made in 2003 for the sound work Recording Machines. For Spincycle, three field recordings from three sites were used. Each site makes up one of the three parts to the Spincycle’s sound: nine women working on a belt and tie manufacturing floor on machines ranging from a small stamp machine to a large steam press and a variety of sewing machines (using two Amp Spin machines), a ceramicist who sings while throwing a pot on a potter’s wheel (using two Mic Spin machines), and two women working on dry cleaner steam presses (using three Mic Spin machines).
Exhibition and Performance History: 2017 Avatar (Quebec City, Canada)
Press: “Marla Hlady – Spincycle.” YouTube, uploaded by Mois Multi, 29 November, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hSu9svBPkc.
See also: Count and Strike and Spin, Orchestra of the Tactile
