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Luc Gut and Rolf Hellat X Jemma Foster
Luc Gut and Rolf Hellat are visual and performance artists and sound engineers → @oszilot
OSZILOT is a hybrid of sound installation and performance. Everyday objects suspended from strings are transformed into oscillating sound objects via movement sensors. The objects lose their everyday function and become animated and symbolic art objects. They create rhythm patterns, soundscapes, and abstract musical structures. The objects transform into living beings, ritual instruments, or futuristic manifestations of our imagination. The movement of the objects are translated into sound by small gyroscope sensors, which wirelessly send the movement-data to a computer which transforms it into sound. The transdisciplinary project by Luc Gut and Rolf Hellat combines basic pendulum physics with the cosmos of digital sound synthesis.The rhythms of the pendulum objects change by adjusting the length of the strings on which they are suspended. Thus, pendulums can be used like a primitive analog drum machine, but with the rhythms shifting in organic ways, creating constantly changing rhythmic patterns. An archaic, physical world is combined with the possibilities of digital sound synthesis. The audiovisual pendulum ensemble is a unique form of live electronic music performance in which the creation of sound is intuitively understood. After the performance, the audience is invited to play the objects, transforming OSZILOT into an interactive installation.
JF: You describe the transformational process of Oszilot as turning everyday objects into living beings, which makes me think of the Japanese concept of tsukumogami: after 100 years of service an inanimate object is granted a Shinto spirit and comes to life. Do these objects retain their functionality in your eyes or do you see them as permanently transformed into objects of ritual and art?
Rolf Hellat: Your reference is very interesting. I didn’t know about tsukumogami. But this concept is exactly what I feel about our objects. They are permanently transformed into objects of sound art. For me, they have a spirit, a life, a character. And their character is expressed through sound.
Luc Gut: The spirit of the object arises in the relationship we have to it. In our pendulum ensemble, the objects lose their original functionality and become ritual artefacts into which we breathe a new spirit through sounds. We want to stimulate the imagination and appreciate the objects.
RH: We are honored to mingle with their spirits. In fact, Oszilot is a group of 2 humans and 15 tsukomogamis, I would say.
LG: I hope we appreciate the objects enough, because I read, that tsukumogamis are also forgotten everyday objects, and that take revenge on their owners in frustration and anger. Until now, fortunately they didn’t haunt us. But I guess, in our throwaway society the damage caused by these ghosts is immense!
JF: Filmmaker Julian Henriques describes sound systems as time machines, transporting sonic bodies to exist and think through sound. How do you view the distortion of time and space that occurs through the organic rhythms of the various pendulum-objects?
RH: Pendulums, with their back-and-forth motion, introduce a sense of cyclical time. The repetitive nature of these organic rhythms can bend our perception of time, indeed.
LG: Yes, time is very elastic in terms of its effect. The pendulum rhythms have a decelerating effect that calms the stressed mind.
RH: It is not only the repetitive nature, but also the immense focus on the combination of image and sound that can bend my perception of time. Pendulums unite the reception of our eyes and ears in a primal way.
LG: It is important to us in our performances that we take our time so that the music can impact. We don't want to torpedo the audience with effects, but create space for them to have their own thoughts.
RH: Yes, during our rehearsals or during the live performance we and also the listeners often experience a distortion of time, feeling a little bit suspended in an eternal present.I think the immense focus on this sensual reception, provoked by pendulums, leads to a compression of time. Actually, it is not a compression, but an expansion. Perhaps compression and expansion are no longer opposites. In focussed time, I feel compression and expansion are wonderfully united.
LG: The pendulum objects also evoke a sense of displacement. They can transport us to imaginative spaces beyond our physical environment.
RH: This spatial dislocation can challenge conventional notions of where sound originates and where it leads, blurring boundaries and expanding sonic landscapes. There is a fascinating irregularity in the so called regular pendulums, which sometimes induce an emotional response. Certain rhythms and soundscapes evoke feelings of calm, introspection, or excitement, further enhancing my time-traveling experience. So, I totally align with Julian Henriques description.
LG: Also the pendulum objects seem to have the power to open up a realm of phantasy for listeners to exist and think through sound. Parts of the concert take place in the imagination and the heads of the listeners.
Each individual's interpretation and experience will be unique anyway, making our work as sound artists an unknown journey through time, space and consciousness, guided by pendulum sounds.
RL: And also a sense of connection and unity can emerge, a concert is actually like a shared communal „hyper-consciousness“.
JF: What are the fundamentals of pendulum physics?
LG: The most relevant physical law for us is that of the string pendulum. In theory, the string pendulum always oscillates in the same rhythm, regardless of whether it swings back and forth firmly or only slightly. As we all know, pendulums have been a main instrument to measure time. But in our practice, this accuracy is not quite true, because other parameters, such as air resistance, come into play. This imprecision makes our pendulums interesting for us from a musical point of view.
RH: And besides that, we do adjust the rhythms. The main way to change the duration of the back and forth movement is by changing the length of the string.
LG: For me, the exciting thing is that the rhythms change constantly by themselves, and also by ourselves, because we can adjust it in a certain way. Floating rhythmic patterns emerge. Patterns no human could play in this way. It is very organic and at the same time hypnotic.
JF: Chaos pendulum and your use of polyrhythmic patterns subverts the phenomena of pendulum synchronisation, has your work with pendulums lead you to believe the universe to be more inherently entropic or syntropic?
LG: Oh, I haven't got that far yet... However, we are interested in both the harmonising and ordering states in our music, as well as the chaotic components, such as the chaos pendulum (a pendulum consisting of three connected pendulums).
RH: For me, I see the universe as more entropic. The work with pendulums led me to try to see the beauty in the chaos. I learn to see patterns, systems, harmony within entropy. But actually I believe that chaos does not really exist. I think chaos always has a logic, a structure, a pattern as well, even if humans do not recognise it. Chaos seems to be only a human notion for the inexplicable, the „too-complex“. It is something, where science itself fails to explain. In this sense, working with pendulums, especially the chaos pendulum has made me see the universe as less entropic. Ha, i withdraw my first statement.
LG: Generally I like to play with the contrast of musical order and chaos. A little chaos from time to time gives the music a good seasoning and the ear looks forward to a little more harmony afterwards.
RH: Our chaos pendulum also somehow creates harmony. It transforms the chaotic movement into a kind of delightful music. I think we propose this aspect of chaos as a state of beauty and clarity. The chaos pendulum as a musical instrument somehow seems to be a decoding of chaos and at the same time a celebration of entropy.
JF: Time is a slippery concept. The esoteric J. G. Bennett described three dimensions or aspects of time a) Time - causal or determinate influences on the present moment, b) Eternity - the influence of forms and values, C) Hyparxis - the influence of the Will (freedom) to choose within the present Moment. The physical world, life and consciousness lie in intermediate zones between these dimensions. What is time for you?
LG: Our relation to time is important to me. What we aim for in our music is to alter the perception of time. With the pendulums, which have a hypnotic effect, we want to create a deceleration of time.
RH: For me, time is a gigantic carousel with fabulous creatures to sit on, set in the heart of a strange amusement park. A whimsical loop-de-loop journey that constantly changes depending on where I look or where I sit on the carousel. My most favorable place on the carousel is near the middle of the little gnome - that’s where the spinning movement is most subtle and I can let go of my hands.
JF:The installation is also interactive, inviting the audience to play with the objects. How can people engage more with this practice?
RH: Yes, the installation is also interactive. At the end of each concert, the concert continues, played by a chaotic audience. At the moment, there is no practice that you can participate in at home - enriching objects with sound requires certain technical equipment.
LG: But we plan to create an Open-Source-Version of our technical knowhow soon.
RH: What you can generally do at home is this: give love to your objects around you, they will appreciate it, for real.
Image 1: Le Castrum 2022_© Jessie Schaer
Image 2: PTTH - - ©Rolf Hellat
Image 3: PTTH Luzern - 2021 - - ©Sarah Muehlebach
Image 4: Lucas-Ziegler
Image 5: Chaos Pendulum by Lucas Zeigler
Luc Gut and Rolf Hellat X Jemma Foster
Luc Gut and Rolf Hellat are visual and performance artists and sound engineers → @oszilot
OSZILOT is a hybrid of sound installation and performance. Everyday objects suspended from strings are transformed into oscillating sound objects via movement sensors. The objects lose their everyday function and become animated and symbolic art objects. They create rhythm patterns, soundscapes, and abstract musical structures. The objects transform into living beings, ritual instruments, or futuristic manifestations of our imagination. The movement of the objects are translated into sound by small gyroscope sensors, which wirelessly send the movement-data to a computer which transforms it into sound. The transdisciplinary project by Luc Gut and Rolf Hellat combines basic pendulum physics with the cosmos of digital sound synthesis.The rhythms of the pendulum objects change by adjusting the length of the strings on which they are suspended. Thus, pendulums can be used like a primitive analog drum machine, but with the rhythms shifting in organic ways, creating constantly changing rhythmic patterns. An archaic, physical world is combined with the possibilities of digital sound synthesis. The audiovisual pendulum ensemble is a unique form of live electronic music performance in which the creation of sound is intuitively understood. After the performance, the audience is invited to play the objects, transforming OSZILOT into an interactive installation.
JF: You describe the transformational process of Oszilot as turning everyday objects into living beings, which makes me think of the Japanese concept of tsukumogami: after 100 years of service an inanimate object is granted a Shinto spirit and comes to life. Do these objects retain their functionality in your eyes or do you see them as permanently transformed into objects of ritual and art?
Rolf Hellat: Your reference is very interesting. I didn’t know about tsukumogami. But this concept is exactly what I feel about our objects. They are permanently transformed into objects of sound art. For me, they have a spirit, a life, a character. And their character is expressed through sound.
Luc Gut: The spirit of the object arises in the relationship we have to it. In our pendulum ensemble, the objects lose their original functionality and become ritual artefacts into which we breathe a new spirit through sounds. We want to stimulate the imagination and appreciate the objects.
RH: We are honored to mingle with their spirits. In fact, Oszilot is a group of 2 humans and 15 tsukomogamis, I would say.
LG: I hope we appreciate the objects enough, because I read, that tsukumogamis are also forgotten everyday objects, and that take revenge on their owners in frustration and anger. Until now, fortunately they didn’t haunt us. But I guess, in our throwaway society the damage caused by these ghosts is immense!
JF: Filmmaker Julian Henriques describes sound systems as time machines, transporting sonic bodies to exist and think through sound. How do you view the distortion of time and space that occurs through the organic rhythms of the various pendulum-objects?
RH: Pendulums, with their back-and-forth motion, introduce a sense of cyclical time. The repetitive nature of these organic rhythms can bend our perception of time, indeed.
LG: Yes, time is very elastic in terms of its effect. The pendulum rhythms have a decelerating effect that calms the stressed mind.
RH: It is not only the repetitive nature, but also the immense focus on the combination of image and sound that can bend my perception of time. Pendulums unite the reception of our eyes and ears in a primal way.
LG: It is important to us in our performances that we take our time so that the music can impact. We don't want to torpedo the audience with effects, but create space for them to have their own thoughts.
RH: Yes, during our rehearsals or during the live performance we and also the listeners often experience a distortion of time, feeling a little bit suspended in an eternal present.I think the immense focus on this sensual reception, provoked by pendulums, leads to a compression of time. Actually, it is not a compression, but an expansion. Perhaps compression and expansion are no longer opposites. In focussed time, I feel compression and expansion are wonderfully united.
LG: The pendulum objects also evoke a sense of displacement. They can transport us to imaginative spaces beyond our physical environment.
RH: This spatial dislocation can challenge conventional notions of where sound originates and where it leads, blurring boundaries and expanding sonic landscapes. There is a fascinating irregularity in the so called regular pendulums, which sometimes induce an emotional response. Certain rhythms and soundscapes evoke feelings of calm, introspection, or excitement, further enhancing my time-traveling experience. So, I totally align with Julian Henriques description.
LG: Also the pendulum objects seem to have the power to open up a realm of phantasy for listeners to exist and think through sound. Parts of the concert take place in the imagination and the heads of the listeners.
Each individual's interpretation and experience will be unique anyway, making our work as sound artists an unknown journey through time, space and consciousness, guided by pendulum sounds.
RL: And also a sense of connection and unity can emerge, a concert is actually like a shared communal „hyper-consciousness“.
JF: What are the fundamentals of pendulum physics?
LG: The most relevant physical law for us is that of the string pendulum. In theory, the string pendulum always oscillates in the same rhythm, regardless of whether it swings back and forth firmly or only slightly. As we all know, pendulums have been a main instrument to measure time. But in our practice, this accuracy is not quite true, because other parameters, such as air resistance, come into play. This imprecision makes our pendulums interesting for us from a musical point of view.
RH: And besides that, we do adjust the rhythms. The main way to change the duration of the back and forth movement is by changing the length of the string.
LG: For me, the exciting thing is that the rhythms change constantly by themselves, and also by ourselves, because we can adjust it in a certain way. Floating rhythmic patterns emerge. Patterns no human could play in this way. It is very organic and at the same time hypnotic.
JF: Chaos pendulum and your use of polyrhythmic patterns subverts the phenomena of pendulum synchronisation, has your work with pendulums lead you to believe the universe to be more inherently entropic or syntropic?
LG: Oh, I haven't got that far yet... However, we are interested in both the harmonising and ordering states in our music, as well as the chaotic components, such as the chaos pendulum (a pendulum consisting of three connected pendulums).
RH: For me, I see the universe as more entropic. The work with pendulums led me to try to see the beauty in the chaos. I learn to see patterns, systems, harmony within entropy. But actually I believe that chaos does not really exist. I think chaos always has a logic, a structure, a pattern as well, even if humans do not recognise it. Chaos seems to be only a human notion for the inexplicable, the „too-complex“. It is something, where science itself fails to explain. In this sense, working with pendulums, especially the chaos pendulum has made me see the universe as less entropic. Ha, i withdraw my first statement.
LG: Generally I like to play with the contrast of musical order and chaos. A little chaos from time to time gives the music a good seasoning and the ear looks forward to a little more harmony afterwards.
RH: Our chaos pendulum also somehow creates harmony. It transforms the chaotic movement into a kind of delightful music. I think we propose this aspect of chaos as a state of beauty and clarity. The chaos pendulum as a musical instrument somehow seems to be a decoding of chaos and at the same time a celebration of entropy.
JF: Time is a slippery concept. The esoteric J. G. Bennett described three dimensions or aspects of time a) Time - causal or determinate influences on the present moment, b) Eternity - the influence of forms and values, C) Hyparxis - the influence of the Will (freedom) to choose within the present Moment. The physical world, life and consciousness lie in intermediate zones between these dimensions. What is time for you?
LG: Our relation to time is important to me. What we aim for in our music is to alter the perception of time. With the pendulums, which have a hypnotic effect, we want to create a deceleration of time.
RH: For me, time is a gigantic carousel with fabulous creatures to sit on, set in the heart of a strange amusement park. A whimsical loop-de-loop journey that constantly changes depending on where I look or where I sit on the carousel. My most favorable place on the carousel is near the middle of the little gnome - that’s where the spinning movement is most subtle and I can let go of my hands.
JF:The installation is also interactive, inviting the audience to play with the objects. How can people engage more with this practice?
RH: Yes, the installation is also interactive. At the end of each concert, the concert continues, played by a chaotic audience. At the moment, there is no practice that you can participate in at home - enriching objects with sound requires certain technical equipment.
LG: But we plan to create an Open-Source-Version of our technical knowhow soon.
RH: What you can generally do at home is this: give love to your objects around you, they will appreciate it, for real.
Image 1: Le Castrum 2022_© Jessie Schaer
Image 2: PTTH - - ©Rolf Hellat
Image 3: PTTH Luzern - 2021 - - ©Sarah Muehlebach
Image 4: Lucas-Ziegler
Image 5: Chaos Pendulum by Lucas Zeigler