Resonance
Dimitris Theocharis, a visual artist and one of the artists in residency at Strong in 2024, inaugurated today his beautiful art installation entitled Resonance (2024). Resonance is an artwork designed to react to the detection of candidate gravitational wave events caused by merging compact binaries such as black holes or neutron stars. It receives real-time alerts from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (www.ligo.org), and in response, it generates unique audible waves that are influenced by the surrounding environmental conditions.
Equipped with multi-sensors, the artwork collects information about its immediate environment and detects the presence and motion of nearby living beings. When an alert of candidate gravitational wave events is received from LIGO, these sensors are triggered to gather and relay the data about the environment. This data serves as a parameter for shaping a generative real-time sound composition. The resulting audio is emitted through a speaker housed within a black glass sphere, whose physical properties influence the final sonic output.
Thus, these cosmic ripples prompt the artwork to generate sound waves. It is an interactive art piece that remains partially hidden, until certain conditions are met, to allow the interplay between cosmic and terrestrial events to unfold.
Materials: Coated glass sphere, aluminum profile, wood, sensors, speaker, cables, electronics.
This artwork was created as part of the Strong Group artist residency program in 2024, and is on display at the historical NBI building.