Student uses microscopes to get closer look at potential for music creation
"Ivana Dama is innovating what can constitute a musical instrument, using a microscope and human brain tissue in her latest performance.
Third-year design media arts student Ivana Dama’s audiovisual project consists of a microscope and slides serving as musical instruments. She triggers specific sounds by changing the parameters of the microscope’s camera and layering the output with other sound effects to create music. (Niveda Tennety/Daily Bruin) The third-year design media arts student gave a presentation of her audiovisual project in an improvisational performance at Studio 106 L.A. on April 21. The ongoing project consists of a microscope and slides that Dama uses as a musical instrument. By manipulating parameters of the microscope’s camera, such as focus and movement, Dama triggers specific sound effects – like altered frequencies of different piano samples – to create music. The microscopic image Dama uses to stimulate sounds is projected behind her, and is visually filtered based on the frequency of the audio it creates. Despite her lack of a background in music, Dama said she was inspired to use sound as an artistic medium.
“I was interested in exploring the different ways that we can play the instruments,” Dama said. “Not just by knowing really well certain instruments but kind of applying new rules into the musical instruments and the music world.”
At the Sound + Science Symposium 2.0 at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA on Friday, Dama will give another presentation of her project. Dillon Bastan, a third-year design media arts students who collaborated with Dama on her project, is also set to perform at the event, and the two will be leading hands-on workshops for the technology they use."—Saskia Lane, Apr. 29, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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