SignalToNoise

post on adafruit
10.12.2013
internet blog by:
Limor "Ladyada" Fried

featuring:
SignalToNoise, kinetic sound installation
by LAb[au] 2012

post:
LAb[au] used 512 vintage split-flap modules to create an immersive, kinetic installation. Joseph Flaherty at wired.com writes:

Inside an aluminum structure, roughly the size of a narrow body airline cabin, 512 vintage split-flap letter mechanisms are arrayed in four rows at eye height. Controlled by a hidden computer, each of the individual mechanisms flip continuously through letters until the software recognizes that a word has been formed by adjacent units.

The computer freezes those nodes and flips their color to red while the others continue to cascade, revealing a hidden signal among the noise. "As artists we try to extract the character of our time, to give contemporaneity a form and a meaning," says Lab[au] principle Manuel Abendroth. "The circular installation invites the visitor to plunge into an audio-visual composition right in the center of a calculation process of an auto-poetic machine."