During April 2024, I had the pleasure of being an artist in residence at the amazing iii Instrument Inventors Initiative in The Hague, The Netherlands. It was a research residency, so I decided to focus on my fascination with magnetic sensing, and explore all things magnetic. A research residency is such a special opportunity, because I was able to follow inklings, go off at tangents, play with ideas, and hope that things would start to coalesce and make sense, without the pressure of making a finished piece by the end of the month. Here is a short film about my residency made by the brilliant Erfan Abdi.

I have long been fascinated with the phenomenal act of migration made by birds around the globe. Such a fragile, small creature navigating huge distances, without borders. Birds use the geomagnetism of the earth to navigate, and it is not fully known how they sense this very weak magnetic field. Scientific theories speculate about quantum entangled particles in the eyes of birds, connected to the cryptochrome gene – a kind of light dependent magnosensitivity. Other species also have a magnetic sense – do we? Have we lost touch with this ability over time? Does our magnetic sense lie dormant?

Slightly weird aside… I’ve been wanting to explore magnetic sensing for many years, and it seems that now is the right time, combined with the right opportunity. This also coincides with a new ‘thing’ that is happening to me – which is – every wrist watch I wear slows down… which has only just started happening. Maybe I have developed some kind of internal, bodily magnetism? I have tried out three watches, and they work absolutely fine when I’m not wearing them, but gradually lose time when I put them on my wrist…

I’m always keen to learn more from people who research in different disciplines, so I tracked down a scientist called Sam England, as I had read some interesting papers he’d published on the ecology of electricity and electroreception, including how bees and flowers share information via static charges in the atmosphere. While I was at iii, Sam was happy to have a chat with me on zoom, and generously shared many fascinating aspects of his research. I particularly enjoyed learning about the waggle dance bees perform to share information with each other. The dance is performed in the hive, in darkness, so other bees ‘read’ the waggle dance, not only through sound vibrations, but also through the shifting of static charge in the atmosphere. Described by Sam as a ‘Multimodal transfer of information from bee to bee’.

Quite near the start of my residency, I made a trip to Haarlem to the Teyler’s Museum, which houses the world’s largest Electrostatic Generator. It was so inspiring, and I spent 2 hours just in one room. The Teyler’s seemed to be the perfect museum to explore my current fascinations – electromagnets, electro static generators, induction coils, telegraph systems, magnetic rocks, sea water batteries, voltaic piles, experiments with electricity to make sound, helmholtz resonators… the list goes on – my mind was bustling with new ideas, connections and threads to follow up … Some photos below.

I had also been researching early experiments with static electricity, including the Leyden Jar, Wimhurst Machine and Franklins Bells, the latter being of specific interest as it is an experiment that converts static charge into kinetic movement, to ring bells (ie – make sound!). Franklin also combined the bells with another invention of his, the lighting rod, to be used as an early warning system for electrical storms. (Nice connection to atmospheric electricity and weather).

I decided to try to build a Wimhurst machine so I could see whether I could generate a static charge to create kinetic energy, hoping that the process of making may also provoke some new ideas inspired by these early experiments in electricity. I made use of a few items from the excellent local ‘Kringloop-winkel’ (tranlates to “recycle-store”), including a double Franz Bauer CD that I sanded down to use as the two circular plates (apologies to any fans!). Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get this working and sparking, but it was a useful process to go through, and gave me a chance to orientate myself in the excellent iii workshop, and I may re-visit this in the future. Some photos below.

Following this, and in connection to my conversation with Sam about bees and static charge, I started thinking more about atmospheric electricity, which led me to an exploration of crystal radios. Lo and behold, the best ever radio spares shop in the world is in The Hague – Radio Twenthe. Having spent a load of time preparing for my residency by finding odd items like variable capacitors, ferrite rods, and reels of enamelled copper wire to bring with me, most of these bespoke ‘radio-related’ items were happily nestling aplenty amongst the wonderful boxes of delights at Radio Twenthe. Many a browsing hour was passed.

I brought with me, a box of goodies – ranging from, bits to make radios, magnetic rocks, magnets, instructions on how to make a battery from mud, a VLF radio to pick up ‘natural radio’ (sounds from the magnetosphere), amber and wool to create static – (the origin of the word ‘electricity’ came from the Greek work for amber ‘elektron’ – see a previous residency in Kaliningrad exploring this idea), some EMF pick-ups, and the usual kind of recording stuff, synths, electronics… etc.

During my time at iii, I explored many more avenues of practice based research, starting with the Wimhurst machine and progressed to making a crystal radio and connecting it to an existing weather station as an antenna, soldering an FM radio transmitter circuit and mini theremin from a kit, making a seawater battery, playing with educational science kits to explore magnetism, using a VLF radio to record sounds from the magnetosphere, using copper coils as pickups and drivers to oscillate magnetic fields to resonate a metal double bass string using feedback, searching for magnetic rocks and ‘crystals’ for radios… and more… some photos below.

About half way through my residency, I decided to focus on developing a series of experiments using magnets and electromagnets to attract and repel a pendulum. I was intrigued by the movements that emerged when switching the polarity of electro-magnetic coils to attract and repel a permanent magnet. I built a small control box so I could adjust the strength and polarity of electromagnets and started to ‘play’ the pendulum movement like an instrument. I was attracted to the indeterminacy of this phenomenon, and how much I had to concentrate on timing the magnet switching to coax different kinds of movements from the pendulum, that often would result in something I didn’t expect.

I had found an appealing way to create kinetic energy from magnetic fields, and needed to think about how to use this movement to create sound. Thinking back to the magnetic sense being potentially related to light perception and circadian rhythms, I decided to put an LED on the end of the pendulum and set up and array of light sensors below, so the light levels of the moving LED could be measured. This dancing light also made me think about the waggle dances of bees too… I converted this into sound in two ways, the first was to use an arduino to send the light level information into my computer, so I could use the variation in light levels to adjust parameters on a synth, or trigger samples. This LED pendulum was suspended over 5 magnets and 5 Light Dependent Resistors (LDRs), with all the magnets positioned to repel the pendulum magnet, (I used all permanent magnets). To play this, I manually set the pendulum in motion to then generate unpredictable movements that responded to the array of reverse polarity magnets. The second method employed a simple circuit using a NAND gate Integrated Circuit logic chip – the 4093, based on one of the first noise makers I made from Nicolas Collins’ epic book ‘Hand Made Electronic Music‘. For one pendulum I used a single LDR in the centre on top of an electromagnetic coil that I could switch the polarity of, and the second pendulum used a 3 way NAND gate noise-maker responding to 3 LDRs positioned around one switchable coil. These three different magnetic pendulums gave me plenty to play with as a starting point, and I particularly enjoyed switching the coils to attract and repel pendulums without touching them. (Later on, I added a switchable coil to the centre of the arduino version, which works well, as I can now initiate the movement without touching it). Below are some photos of the process of making and setting this up.

I had the opportunity to present the results of my residency at ‘Flipchart‘, an event series at iii curated by Leon Lapa Pereira that focusses on the creative process and provides an ideal context to present a ‘work in progress’. My ‘Flipchart’ contribution began with a short presentation outlining my research and inspirations, followed by a demonstration of the seawater battery, set up so I could agitate the seawater to generate small shifts in voltage to change sounds on my modular synth. I then mixed in the bass string resonating through the oscillation of magnetic fields, and finished with a short performance on the magnetic light pendulums. Below are some photos from my presentation at Flipchart taken by Pieter Kers, and the video at the top also has clips from Flipchart.

While I was on my residency, I was lucky enough to be in town to attend the incredible ‘Rewire‘ music festival that takes over The Hague for 4 days in April, along with the brilliant ‘Proximity Music‘ sound art exhibition curated by iii. The featured composer at Rewire this year was Annea Lockwood, who I am a huge fan of, so I was thrilled to have the chance to attend many of her concerts and listen to her speak about listening, improvisation and collaboration … and I experienced many other incredible performances, installations and met many interesting people. A truly inspiring time.

I am grateful to iii for supporting this project with a 1 month funded research residency in their brilliant workshops and studios where I also had the pleasure of meeting and working alongside so many interesting artists and researchers. Since my residency, I have further developed the Magnetic Pendulums, and used them in a number of improvisation settings, which forms part of my DYCP project, funded by Arts Council England. More on this to follow!