http://designingsound.org/2013/09/cicadas-sound-installation/
The link above is to an interview with the sound Artist Bob Meanza, talking about one of his pieces 'Cicadas'.
“Cicadas” is an installation with a difference. Bringing together sound design, technology and natural science, Berlin-based sound artist Bob Meanza has created sonic robots which emulate some of the resonance and timbral qualities of the cicada."
I decided to look at this piece because the way he used the 'Robots' to create the different sounds, interested me. The sound the 'Robots' made were determined by their own physical shape.
What i really liked about it was the contrast between the very naturalistic sounds at the start and the electronic/robotic noises in the middle of the piece.
The interview explained how he achieved the electronic noises with the robots, this was his explanation of how the robots worked:
"The physical structure is always following a fixed order: battery, controller, emitter. The battery provides the electricity, the controller generates the signal, which is fed directly to the emitter. I chose a different sound synthesis and settings for every Cicada: there’s a very simple PWM synth, an impulse-wave synth, and a very weird mathematical synth that work with esoteric formulas that are not really related to sound, but in some way do their job. Then there’s the emitter part: different relays sound different, piezos have distinctive sounds too, and so on. The concept was: keep it as bare-bones as possible. But still, I had to experiment a lot assembling these elements together, till the little frankenstein prototypes started sounding like insects."
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