“Music On A Long Thin Wire” is a sound and installation piece conceived in 1977 and repeatedly staged thereafter. A single piano wire (originally three- to four-foot-long, then lenghtened over the course of other performances) is stretched between bridges at either end. Both ends of the wire are connected to an amplifier, driving the wire with a sine wave oscillator. A horseshoe magnet is placed around the wire. When the wire is electrified, its current interacts with the magnetic field and the vibrations are picked up by microphones connected to the bridges. The resulting sound is controlled by a performer who control the sine wave oscillator inducing sonic phenomena as “nodal shifts, echo trains, noisy overdrivings”.
Source: Music on a Long Thin Wire by Alvin Lucier (1977) – SOCKS
ECHO | NOTHING 