Cinq Cinq Cinq is an installation and research platform for aesthetic exploration of participant interactions through sound and movement. Interactants manipulate controllers to affect the pitch and timbres produced by the device and there is a noticeable degree of chance variation in the system. It is constructed from scrap plywood, a reclaimed band spring, an oscillator circuit, and an audio processing & amplification system. The oscillator causes the spring to vibrate producing sound which is then amplified. The length of the band spring allows the acoustics of the room environment to affect the sounds produced. The use of different control interfaces offers variations that facilitate phenomenological research. The theorization of imaginative variation as an element of phenomenological methodology appears frequently in philosophical literature. (e.g. Husserl 1973(1948), Van Mannen 1990, Vagle 2009). By creating a “strange tool” (Noë 2016) this installation encourages an exploration by interactants and questions what is the result of each interactant and that of their joint interactions. The work emerges only when activated (Kwastek 2017) and then invites participants and observers to consider how we sense the presence of others and convey our own presence through our body, senses, and movement. In my case, this system was invented to pursue philosophical/phenomenological research in presence, with a view to refining certain problems in theory of mind. However, following from Murphie(2008) variations on this work could be used to facilitate research in other fields, looking at results in the form of accounts of experiences rather than results of experiments.
The project has been exhibited at the Uncommon Senses 2 conference at Concordia in Montreal on May 3rd, 2018.
