Mariska de Groot

A spatial light and sound installation consisting of 7 architectonic units (originally created for the installation work LFS2, in collaboration with Dieter Vandoren). The network of units, evocative of both ancient and futuristic mythical sites, creates a field of shimmer and glow, catalyst of a timeless state of suspension.

Our eyes are slow, great speeds pass us by without us seeing them. What we then observe is a fusion of form and color over time. Only as soon as we divide the movement into moments do we see clearly what is moving. ‘Hidden Patterns // 2’ uses simple early animation techniques to explore the wonderful creative power of our brain. Movement as an optical illusion. A disc with a cut-out symmetrical pattern rotates and is projected through with a composition of light frequencies. As a result, the pattern wheel is always briefly exposed. By playing with complex light patterns, we observe different moving patterns. The composition of light flickers is made using synthesizer simulators. By placing light sensors in the projection, the moving patterns are made audible. The light and sound are thus naturally perfectly synchronized.

Motorized instruments are hanging from the ceiling, creating a sound sculpture in the space. As a visitor you envelope yourself in slowly changing harmonium sounds. An old spinning choral humming top that De Groot ones found on a flea market was the start for the immersive installation. Fascinated by the colorful children’s toy making a 3 chord melody she researched its patented technique, the history of the top and the free-reed instrument. It resulted in a choir of motorized spinning tops, hanging from the ceiling. Every instrument is tuned differently, when walking along them different interferences and beatings can be heard.

Above your head spins a collection of bobbin lace doilies with floral patterns. Like a field in claire obscure, they open and close as if they were hit by the wind. Due to a special way of lighting, the patterns of the rugs seem to be constantly changing. Crochet is a visual music installation with strong cinematographic references, where kinetics and old-fashioned craft meet each other in a surprising way. The work is part of De Groot’s ongoing research into wave movements and the interference between frequencies and patterns. Crochet is a production with WerkTank Leuven (BE)

Stirred Mandala is a light and sound performance that arises from Mariska’s ongoing research on optical sound, interfering patterns and spiral movements in body and machine. The spinning pattern of a ‘tone wheel’ is projected on the floor, like a rug of light creating the instrument surface for the performer, while light-to-sound transducers become her playful tools. Changing frequencies of the light cause the projection to appear in different patterns going in different directions, sound follows this optical illusion. Stirred Mandala II was developed during an artist in residency in A4, Bratislava.

With her use of optical sound as main medium and interest to create immersive environments where light and sound are one, Mariska de Groot now explores the possibilities of the single sculptural object and 360˚ light-to-sound scores. Inspired by unintentional light projection or reflection and in the tradition of kinetic light sculptures like the Light-Space Modulator by Moholy-Nagy, ‘Incidence of Light’ is a kinetic light-to-sound sculpture that uses the interior space as an extension of itself. Using a selection of white LED’s, rotating masks and mirrors, different light frequencies peek through the small openings of a slowly rotating cylindrical graphical score, creating a light composition on the walls and possible objects (and visitors) in the room, while primitive cameras on top of the sculpture scan the patterns and make the rhythmic light / dark parts in the room audible. The sounds heard are overall synthesized and abstract, but can be associated with street sounds and noises. The translation from light to sound happens one on one. The light is controlled by voltage or audio frequencies, the reflection of the high frequency flickering light turns back to sound. Shadows become rhythmic silences and gray values determine loudness.

a part of iii's 'Häxen' for Sounds of Silence Festival in The Hague. https://vimeo.com/211270556

Don’t tell the projectionist the projector can make music! The 16mm projector is an electronic instrument not particularly known for its musical history. Within the history of expanded cinema many artists worked with the projector as instrument, but this project uses a whole orchestra of these machines! The filmprojector is a noisy apparatus that projects the image of film and uses a second light to project optical sound. For the Optical Sound Orchestra, Mariska de Groot created a piece where the rattling apparatus functions as a musical instrument and the projectionists serve as musicians. Slowed down and amplified, you experience the procedure of the projector being put into operation. An orchestra of six performers and twelve instruments brings an ode to the rhythm and richness of sounds behind cinema. For this composition De Groot investigated the characteristics of sound the different types of projectors carry, their original rattling, the noises gathered through the years and the hidden sounds like electromagnetic fields. The different sounds and rhythms are printed on film and orchestrated in combination with invented live techniques to play the 16mm projector as an instrument. http://www.mariskadegroot.com/projects/optical-sound-orchestra/

A project by Lars Kynde and Mariska de Groot for the Elsinore Girls Marching Band, performed in the Danish Museum of Science and Technology. A carefully designed spinning tonewheel projects on the floor and forms the instrument that 30 girls of the marching band play together. Each holding a light-to-sound transducer in the one hand and a speaker in the other creating different sound sculptures depending on the movement they make and the patterns they position.

Installation, 2015, in collaboration with Dieter Vandoren – LFS1 is an environment in which visitors physically interfere with analogue generative processes, creating audible and visible patterns. The space is filled with fog. A large number of light to sound modules are arranged in coherent configurations in space. A smaller number of directional light sources are arranged in-between, and rotate around their axis. Light beams form structures, sound waves interfere. The space scans the scanning visitor. Visitors navigating in this misty landscape, interrupt with their shadows the natural state of the field and cause interruptions in the audio signals so that new changing rhythmic patterns emerge. Several visitors participating in this multi-sensory space creates a collective interaction, while the individual physical immersion stimulates a synaesthetic experience. http://www.mariskadegroot.com/projInstallation, 2015/2018, in collaboration with Dieter Vandoren – LFS1 is an environment in which visitors physically interfere with analogue generative processes, creating audible and visible patterns. The space is filled with fog. A large number of light to sound modules are arranged in coherent configurations in space. A smaller number of directional light sources are arranged in-between, and rotate around their axis. Light beams form structures, sound waves interfere. The space scans the scanning visitor. Visitors navigating in this misty landscape, interrupt with their shadows the natural state of the field and cause interruptions in the audio signals so that new changing rhythmic patterns emerge. Several visitors participating in this multi-sensory space creates a collective interaction, while the individual physical immersion stimulates a synaesthetic experience. http://www.mariskadegroot.com/projects/lfs1-a-lightfield-synthesis/ects/lfs1-a-lightfield-synthesis/

If a simple, unstable human handmade apparatus made of scratch materials explains cosmos, then maybe the organisation of space is a result of drunken gods dropping stars and planets as it were confetti? No one ever discovered Nibiru – ‘Planet of crossing’- the ninth planet that passes our solar system ones in a 3000 years. During the performance I intend to track its trace and shape. Nibiru is an analogue and mechanical performative installation wherein simple rythmical body movements activates a squeaky pendulum drawing machine, that on its turn creates complex mathematical images. Noises of resistance are amplified and sound patterns are created by swinging speakers that scan the changing projected geometric line image. The patterns of light and sound refer often to the positions of the planets and provoke a desire for cosmic understanding of the organisation of space. https://vimeo.com/164528364

In murmur ~ singing Yolanda Uriz and Mariska de Groot perform with feedback between light and sound, using self-made analogue equipment to create liquid projections and low frequency vibrations that engulf the audience. Murmuring sounds become storms, reflected through hypnotic, morphing images of light on vibrating water.

http://mariskadegroot.com/projects/shadow-puppet/ Shadow Puppet? presents an interplay of embodied performance and analog machinery that gives rise to an engulfing play of light, shadow and raw optical sound. Two performers – one behind the machines and one in the spotlights – play this light-to-sound instrument in a dynamic tension of attraction and repulsion. It never gets quite clear who is conducting who…

2012-2016 Tucked deep in the cinematic apparatus light projections of rapidly rushing graphic patterns are transformed into sound vibrations. In ‘CineChine’ you experience in physical proportions the phenomenon optical sound – an invention of the 1920’s applied in celluloid and synthesizers – where light and sound are a similar. Objects that remind of a disassembled movie machine are positioned in the room. Beams of light shoot through rotating disks, projecting a composition of dynamic black and white, hard edged forms that find a direct antecedent in the experiments with sound on film carried out by the Russian avant-garde in the late 1920s. The changing light frequenties are picked up by light sensitive speakers and transformed into sound. Soon it is clear that the tones you hear are one and the same with the light that you see. All light is potential sound. The transdisciplinary composition of ‘CineChine’ treats elements of cinematography from the viewpoint of the projector. The perspective of time&rhythm and light&sound are based on projection, shutter speed and rhythm of the machine. For every exhibition a new side-specific composition is made. https://vimeo.com/149665162

http://vimeo.com/43737405 Rediscovering optical sound - an invention of the 1920s originating in film and employed in early synthesizers, Mariska de Groot provides the technology with a life of it’s own creating instruments that openly reveal their functioning. 'Quadtone - lumisonic rotera' is a mesmerizing light-is-sound projection performance in space. Graphical patterned wheels are coding a beam of light, which portable light-sensitive speakers convert into audible frequencies. All leftover light is visual sound.