System Test (fire and ice), which primarily uses my recordings of Jacob’s ladders, ice melting, and papers sliding against each other as the sources, is a rather dramatic piece, which I attribute to the dynamic/dramatic character of the Jacob’s ladder. There is such intensity in the discharges, accompanied by wonderful sizzling, hissing, crackling sounds, and powerful low frequencies—danger is always present. The sources are convolved, stretched, granulated, equalized, and further processed many times over, then whirled into this intense piece.

The visual component for this work uses four electroluminescent wired “imagers” in a very dark presentation space.

System Test (fire and ice) excerpt ©2001 Maggi Payne from Maggi Payne on Vimeo.