Membranas

Abstract

Organized around an installation called Membranas, this dissertation will explore alternative logics and modes of socialization through improvisatory encounters. Membranas is an infrastructure that stimulates call and response exchanges between humans, the wind, vibrations in the air, and a machine. It does this by shifting away from conventional notions of sound and music through the creation of several interactive sculptural elements that activate an experience using vibrational and sonic organs contained in the installation, a set of membrane sensors in the form of flags that perceive sounds and vibrational activity, and a vibrational membrane microphone based on a soft accelerometer elastic sensor to be used outdoors. Membranas is a performative interface that establishes a continuous testbed for exploring resonance as an inclusive force that stimulates collectivity and the sense of interconnectivity among participants. This work emerges as a way of putting into practice ideas within La Membrana, an organizational conceptual apparatus that stimulates vibrational ways of speculating about how to rearrange the social.