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Locatie:BAC ART LAB KU Leuven, Vital Decosterstraat 102
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Accessibility:This location is not accessible for persons with a wheelchair.
A grand piano crowned with a hexagonal antenna arouses our curiosity. The strings of the instrument vibrate, making rhythms, melodies and harmonies. But there is no musician in sight. Instead, the piano is played by invisible electromagnetic waves, both distant (e.g. spherics or thunderstorms) and nearby (e.g. smartphones, motor of a passing car). These ever-present radiations are picked up by the antenna and translated into vibrations via coils with copper windings that make the piano strings sing. With Antenna, the artist Floris Vanhoof places an old mechanical instrument in the (late) information age. In a time when all things are wirelessly connected, he wanted to see and hear how an object that is not of this time reacts to this. How can a visible object relate to the invisible? The work is typical of the versatile Antwerp artist: from various disciplines and interests, he builds interfaces in which old and new technologies, sound and image merge.
2021
Software defined radio programming: Dieter Verbruggen, doctoral researcher at KU Leuven
Electromagnets: Dr. Andrew McPherson, professor at Queen Mary University of London and inventor of the magnetic resonator piano
Signal routing: Kris Delacourt
Coproduction: STUK — House for Dance, Image & Sound, KIKK, CCHA, KU Leuven & Overtoon
Special thanks to: BAC ART LAB, Dienst Cultuur KU Leuven, Flanders and Wallonia, KIKK & CCHA