all performed and edited by Dawn Scarfe
designed by stephen harvey
Tuning to Spheres
Utilising glass, sine tone generators, and turntables, Dawn Scarfe’s Tuning to Spheres (Melange Edition 02) is a series of performances that use wine glasses as what the artist calls ‘lenses’, amplifying sine tones in small loudspeakers.
Scarfe explores touch and resonance to produce an endlessly malleable piece, equal parts static and shifting. These seven tracks are far from a mere tech demo, instead, Tuning to Spheres could almost be described as a modular composition: different combinations of glass creating slowly beating sustained tones, giving way to sparkling textures in the background.
The glasses resonate as they pass underneath the speakers, and Scarfe tweaks the sine tone frequencies to tune the glasses in and out. The resulting swells are gorgeous: the sine tones slowly breathe, and the glass resonances are a beguiling take on the turntable; teaming up with the clinical and mechanical rotations, reconstructing the idea of ‘warmth’ usually associated with record players.
Each track stands on its own, but together, Tuning to Spheres is greater than the sum of its parts; the pauses between tracks purposeful breaths; silence’s in to the sine tones’ out. Swells within swells, circles within circles, all the way down.
