Scrapple

Concept: Golan Levin
Date: 2005

“Scrapple” is an installation that offers a playful way to create music by simply shifting around objects.

Installation visitors can arrange the objects set up on a three-meter-long table any way they like or take some away. The changes in the alignment are interpreted by the installation as the notes of a musical score, whereby the positions of the individual elements on the horizontal and vertical lines determine the rhythms and pitches. The musical score is scanned at regular intervals and the notation created by the user is “played back.”

A hybrid synthesizer (combining a granular and an additive sound synthesizer) produces four-second-long audio loops. Video projections refine the objects arrayed upon the “Scrapple” table. The installation thus becomes a simple augmented reality—i.e. the enhancement of the real world with computer-generated images.

“Scrapple” is the outcome of the implementation by Golan Levin of one of the computer-screen-oriented audio-visual environments that he had conceived in 2000 for his performance entitled “Scribble” in which visitors painted animated graphic symbols on a diagram that served as a musical score. The diagram was scanned at regular intervals and the “notes” were then played back.