Untitled, Charles Frederick Richards 2017
Marble and onyx
550mm x 400mm | Photographer: C.Richards
One of the highlights for us at the End-of-Year Show at the Royal College of Art was Charles Richards' A.T.O.M.S. (Acoustic Tonalities of Mineral Sound), for which Richard sonifies the material properties of stones & minerals.
As part of his project Richards designed a turntable that resonates slabs of marble, travertine, Onyx and clays. He also made album of original compositions derived from the sonified properties of these materials.
Richards writes in the album notes that he wishes to 'inspire new ways of experiencing the materials that make up our landscapes and built [environments]. A.T.O.M.S. is the magnification of the micro sound worlds that lay semi-dormant within many forms of our earth's DNA, but that, as structural surfaces, also have profound effects in acoustically shaping the sound of our environments'.