Mineral Machine Music
Journal Gallery | Highlights from the IEEE VIS 2016 and 2017 Arts Program (VISAP’16 and ’17) | Forbes, A.G., Han, YV., Bravo, EG. & Boy, J. (eds) | Leonardo (2020) 53 (1): 5.
Image Credit: Goodwin & Fay (2014) Mineral Machine Music video still.
(Left panel) Subway steam and street lamps, Broadway, NYC. (Right panel) High-resolution photo-micrograph in cross-polarized light, muscovite and biotite. The differences in colour are due to pleochroism, an optical phenomenon in which the color of the mineral changes depending on the angle of view (the incidence of the light and crystallographic axis).
Project Description
Mineral Machine Music is an aesthetic exploration of the fabric of the earth as seen from the stage of the microscope and the lens of the industrialized city. The work juxtaposes the man-made structural textures of the New York cityscape with the geological mineral formations from the South Australian outback. Blending cityscape with substrate, Mineral Machine Music compliments the imagery with layers of sonic noise—musical representations of tectonic activity, echoes of the universe from deep space and the groans of the restless earth juxtaposed against the industrial machine ambiance of a New York City subway.
Mineral Machine Music - Mitch Goodwin (Street photography, audio field recordings & AV mix) / Clement Fay (photo-micrography, saxaphone & rock crushing).
Mineral Machine Music toured widely and was nominated for numerous international film and media art awards including the MADATAC06 video art award in Madrid and the prestigious Lumen Digital Arts Prize in Cardiff which is recognised by the The Guardian as the “”The world’s pre-eminent digital art prize”. In 2015 Mineral Machine Music was selected for the 16th WRO Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland for the European Union’s 2015 City of Culture program and was one of only thirteen works selected internationally for the IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) VISAP16 Exhibition and Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
Original video: Vimeo
VISAP Gallery: The MIT Press
Pre-Print article: Download PDF
Project notes: Download PDF
