Vortex Sound Research

Fractal Wire Thingies are electromagnetic wire instruments I've been developing that use fractals for their architecture, in particular a special case called space-filling curves. I've been fascinated with these algorithms since the 1980s, and have used them extensively with computers and synthesizers. I was interested to take this work into the electro-acoustic domain to create a more visual and tactile instrument.

I built these prototypes in late 2011 as a proof of concept, and to establish a relatively simple construction process. These photo's were taken during and just after construction. I was driving them with my custom microtonal oscillators, the deadly oscillator, some old keyboards, and soundfiles via the laptop. This lot were sent through a power amplifer to drive the fractal wire section + some self built bits for recording/feedback: piezo contact mics and little field tube pre-amps. The rare earth neodymium magnets are a mixture from old hard disc drives, as well as some new cyclindrical ones and are: super high strength watch your fingers because you will get blood blisters or worse when they come back togeth.. er... !

Eventually I would like to scale up these fractal space-filling curve based electromagnetic wire instruments to full size long wire instruments, such as those used in Rainwire (where they would capture an even larger geo-spatial area).