Ferromancy: Alan Watts and Neal Johnson

Artist/techs Neal Johnson and Alan Watts engage arcane electronic devices and bring the whole Tank to life as a single instrument.

Ferromancy: Conjuring Resonant Memories

Like all physical objects, the monumental steel cylinder known as The Tank resonates when stimulated. For this extraordinary event, Neal Johnson and Alan Watts use arcane electronic devices to bring the whole structure to life as a single instrument, summoning the Tank’s own voice to tell a tale of its past, present, and future.

Technically, here’s what happens. Human-controlled (via MIDI or OSC) or pre-programmed mechanical solenoids and their custom-built motor drivers strike the Tank’s surface. Transducers disseminate sonic energy that induces structural vibrations across multiple audio channels, so that the entire Tank becomes a "speaker.” These devices, magnetically affixed to the steel walls in a hemispheric array, produce an extraordinary, encompassing auditory experience.

Over three years of design, development, and testing, Neal Johnson and Alan Watts developed their concept for this Tank performance. As they listened carefully to the Tank, it communicated to them in clear terms how it would most completely express their intentions.

The two came to understand how the Tank, as a resonant body with a distinctive voice, is continually reshaped by its material nature, its shape and size, ambient temperature and humidity. And they began to wonder. If the Tank told a tale of its past and present, what details might it share? If asked to forecast the future, what would it see in store for itself? For all of us?

So this performance system evolved to tell the Tank’s own saga, of primordial birth, modern human endeavors, and entropic decay. This performance relates that “sound cycle” in four parts:

· The Time Before Time

· A Purpose-driven Life

· A New Lease

· Long After (Entropy’s Delight)