"Pixel Points" 2018

Ross Manning
Born 1978, Yuggera and Turrbal Country/Brisbane, QLD.

Lives and works Yuggera and Turrbal Country/Brisbane, QLD.

Pronouns: he/him.

 

"Pixel Points" 2018

 

LED lights, bolts, computer fans, glass bowls, tin, bamboo, aluminium pipe, metal rulers, tripods, and cable

 

Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Yuggera and Turrbal Country/Brisbane, QLD.

 

Pixel Points is a site-specific sound installation that evolved through Ross Manning’s experiments as a live performer and instrument builder. Composed of everyday found objects, these discarded scraps and industrial detritus have been mindfully collected from the suburban curb side, resource recovery centres, and the artist’s studio. Objects such as wooden offcuts, steel fence posts, computer cooling fans, and a baking tray are placed in spatial relation on the gallery floor, or fused together through DIY soldering techniques, cable ties, and gaffer tape. Removed from their original contexts as consumer items and forgotten trash, the objects enter a new life as artistic materials and sculptural collaborators.

 

Pixel Points is a score for chance and accident: an unprescribed sonic outcome that resists traditional musical notation and the rule-based authorship of the composer. Here, the artist responds to the gallery architecture and its acoustic conditions, creating the parameters for a sonic occurrence that is given over to the materials, which are spatially tuned through their proximity and distance.

 

The materials appear sentient or anthropomorphic, interacting in lively and unexpected ways. Whether mass-manufactured or forged organically, the materials’ chemical composition, minerality, plasticity, or magnetism informs their ability to carry or dampen sound. Chosen for their pitch and timbre rather than their formal qualities, they whirr, ding, crash, and hum to the continuous drone of repurposed computer cooling fans. Pixel Points is propelled by an assemblage of forces: it harnesses the electrical grid, creating mechanical energy and converting it to kinetic and gravitational potential energy to produce sound. The work reminds us that sound, too, is a vibrational material — a force that can affect matter.