We are surrounded by light; our eyes detect and provide details of the colour, shape, luminosity, and movement. Yet, if our eyes could hear, it would be the unknown aural world revealed to our ears. In electronics, there is a photoelectric component that can pick up light waves and transform them into sound signals: the photodiode. The photodiode takes over from where our eyes stop by transposing pulse light into audio frequency.
My residence project, Excitations No. 47, consists of six electromechanical devices whose only sound source depends on light. No frequency generator or oscillator is used; what we hear is the direct result of harnessing electromagnetic waves from light radiation. Thanks to an experimental device based on optical sound, my project is directly inspired by work on “graphic sound” realized by the Russians and Germans in the 1930s, and perfected by Daphne Oram and Norman McLaren in the 1950s and 1960s.