ARTIST: Mark Bain
TITLE: The Omnisound Generator
MATERIALS: Electric motor, mechanical sound generator, spherical mixing chamber,
plastic tubing, industrial headphones.
DIMENSIONS: 34" x 24" x 10"
DATE: January 2005

Warning: extended use with the headphones may induce slight nausea, vertigo and mental confusion in some sensitive persons. Use at your own risk.

DESCRIPTION
Seven octaves, 84 discrete tones, all at once all the time, a history of western music as played back in its entirety as one incessant chord. This drone, this filler of space and monster of the twelve-tone scale, is unrelenting in its ever pervasiveness. As a pneumatic sound engine, the Omnisound Generator allows for remote placement into the machine via air coupled headphones. Monitoring the insides with stethoscopic precision, hear its heartbeat, its scream, its infrasonic rumblings and the wind rushing by. ALL SOUND ENGINES ARE GO!

STATEMENT
The American artist Mark Bain works on the interface of acoustics, architecture and actions of conceptual/experiential integration. For some time Bain has been involved in an ongoing research into the area of sound and architecture and how sonic events condition bodies and buildings they occupy. Sculptural aspects of sound are also investigated in the way resonant materials can define structures in space. Other installations involve living systems and investigative devices, which position the viewer into rarified experiences. In this work, he designs hybrid apparatuses, which engage both locations and the viewing public. These are not necessarily products in themselves, but rather tools developed which lead to certain ends. His research can be thought as a kind of divining, a loosening, or search for living entities, defining a presence within that which is normally thought of as static and dead.

Amsterdam, 2004

CONTACT
Mark Bain
Amsterdam, NL
simulux AT alum.mit.edu
www.simulux.com