Music Animation Machine

http://www.musanim.com

I first saw this demonstrated at the Textile Museum. It accompanied an exhibit exploring pattern. Very pleased to see the endeavour still alive. And the incorporation at the Textile Museum well documented. There's a picture of the gallery set-up. There's the thank-you letter.

Dear Mr. Malinowski,

I am writing to thank you for your kind permission to use the Music Animation Machine in Dance of Pattern, and to send you images and a review from the July issue of the British magazine, Selvedge, which mentions the MAM as an important component of the exhibition. Our visitors really enjoyed it - rarely were the stools and headphones in front of it unoccupied during the long run (Sept 05, 2005 - June 06, 2006) - indeed it was a great opportunity for me to let the MAM do the talking, as it were, in my discourse about patterns in music and patterns in art.

All the best, and thank you again,

Patricia Bentley
Education Curator
Textile Museum of Canada

And the review from the magazine, Selvedge, is reproduced in full, not just the passage mentioning the Music Animation Machine.

In the textile world we tend to take patterns for granted and rarely stop to ask why they look like they do. The starting point for this exhibition was the question what is a pattern? It might sound simple, even banal, but the answer is harder to pin down than you might think. Bentley's initial definition — 'an element — a sound, an image or a movement — that is repeated according to a set of rules that govern proportion and juxtaposition' — sounds a little dry. But then she picks up and expands the musical analogy, bringing the concept alive. 'The basic pattern made by a visual motif," she says, 'is like a melody that can be played in many different ways.' To illustrate this point, on display alongside the American quilts, Peruvian shawls and Indonesian ceremonial skirts was an intriguing device called a Music Animation Machine. Devised by Stephen Malinowski, a musician and inventor from Berkeley, California, it transforms music into colourful abstract animated patterns; chords swell and rhythms jump as you listen.

From Selvedge, excerpt from review by Lesley Jackson.

And so for day 893
24.05.2009