During World War II, artifacts with chilling sounds traversed the skies of England; they were not combat aircraft but flying bombs.
The V1 emitted a pulsating sound like the deafening flutter of giant insects, powered by the PulseJet—a type of engine invented by the Russians in which internal combustion occurs in constant pulses—that does not require moving parts and can burn any type of fuel.
During the Nazi army’s attacks on London, the greatest terror was not the incessant noise but its cessation. Silence meant that the V1 Bomb had run out of fuel and was diving to detonate.
The V1s were designed and built by the German army in 1944. Hundreds of V1s were manufactured at the Fallersleben plant of Volkswagen near Hamburg, to be subsequently launched against the civilian population…
Nahum Mantra invited me to participate in the “Kosmika 2015 – War and Peace in Outer Space” event. I had known about these engines for many years with the intention of using them in some action, and it was the ideal moment to do so. I invited artist 220 to collaborate, and we developed a discourse in three stages about illusion and control. For the final stage, we used a Pulse Jet as a dissipator of illusion.
Wars are generators of “important” technologies for humanity, such as those in the space race, but at the same time that they are ‘bloody’, these technologies also cause enormous damage to the environment.
Grabación de PulseJet el 5 de enero de 2016 en LABORATORIO ARTE ALAMEDA
I built a Pulse Jet engine using exhaust waste from cars, and it was activated inside the Laboratorio Arte Alameda under the dome of the room, to explore the sound and resonance of the place in the presence of the public.
It was then that I realized that the catalyst we used for the Pulse Jet’s combustion chamber was from the VolksWagen-Audi brand, and just in those days, the news came out that the German company had manipulated the software of millions of cars to deceive emissions verification systems, a synchronous event that had to be explored.
Thanks to Julian Bonequi’s invitation and his interest in the project, I decided to focus the exploration and experimentation on a third discourse.
The registration for Audition Records began with this knowledge, using the stock market quotation of the VW company and the historical events of its origin as a ‘diagrammatic score or conceptography of the action’, and we invited Felix Blume to carry out this on-site sound recording.
Pulse Jet > HyperSonorous Action of Dimensional Magnitude in the Idolatry of Combustion
VW emerged with the Nazi regime and was on the verge of disappearing after the fall of the Reich. From those years, after international negotiations, it stabilized and began a constant economic growth. It positioned itself as the most important company in Germany until the crisis of 2015, caused by the deceit and greed of its directors.
The machine that was built has a reduced air intake. To start the Pulse Jet, butane gas is introduced into the combustion chamber, a spark plug generates electric arcs, and air is injected into the chamber with a compressor that oxygenates, causing one explosion after another, starting the combustion process.
The frequency of Pulse Jets ranges between 35 and 45 Hertz. When the air intake is reduced, it is not self-sufficient, and to continue combustion, it requires a constant injection of air. When it is stopped, gas accumulates, and if air is injected again, it changes the power of the explosion.
Air is the control with which I can sequence and modulate the machine to build specific events of sonic power. The score is really the action itself and is an explosive timeline: the attacks on London, the Allied defense, the bombing of Berlin, the destruction of the VW plant, its economic growth, concluding with the crisis caused by its environmental unconsciousness
We are immersed in an idolatry of combustion due to an addiction to fossil fuels and decadent systems of extreme energy that we must stop. These systems must either renew or perish.
In reality, we are immersed in many more errors.
Arcangelo Constantini, 04.03.16
partitura diagramática o conceptografía de la acción
Agradecimientos especiales a Tania Aedo, Mariana García y al equipo del Laboratorio Arte Alameda. Julian Bonequi
To be released @ ART IN RELEASES
https://www.auditionrecords.com/critic13.php Publicado el Sábado 5 de Marzo de 2016