When it Rains
1st exhibition: New Music Concerts, presented at Gallery One2One, Toronto, 2000.
Two lengths of water tubing are stretched across a space, and thirty-two water valves are attached at intervals along the lengths of tubing. Each valve is controlled individually by a midi-to-gate interface, so that individual drops of water are created and controlled by computer. The drops of water fall approximately two metres to land on twenty-four suspended objects, each of which has a contact pick-up attached so that when a drop of water lands on the object, the resonance of that object is amplified.
Pre-programmed musical sequences 'play' the water valves. The sequences are musical compositions which consist of midi notes played in rhythmic patterns, where each note triggers a 40-millisecond pulse that causes a corresponding valve to open just long enough to form a drop of water.
©Gordon Monahan 2000
photos by Jamie Osborne