Resonant Frequency Scanning 2024 was developed as part of the Blue Mountains City of the Arts Propel Emerging Performers Residency.

The residency allowed for the development of work within the Blue Mountains Hub theatre.

Resonant Frequency Scanning emerged from the residency as a site specific interactive multi channel sound experience. The theatre became part of the instruments and the audience participants, playing both their attention and the space.

Participants given ‘tokens’ - a gesture to stimulate curiosity, also containing a simple instructive listening score with the prompt “What Resonates” on them, and encouraged to explore inner and physical space.

Participants were also able to interact with a metal grill at the front of the stage.

Contact microphones were installed on this metal grill, which amplified and projected sounds throughout the space.

The metal grill was also excited by bass frequencies being sent to subwoofers underneath the stage, emphasizing a rattling effect that could thereby be obtained from the grill.

The Hub Theatre enabled an ambitious performance work to be realised, delaying maintenance work on the grill, handing out tokens, allowing participants to move within the space, facilitating a multi-channel system, and creating immersive lighting effects.

As part of the residency, Robert received mentorship from instrument designer Meng Qi, who gave guidance in the design of an instrument designed specifically for the space and performance, the Stage Drone.

This instrument contained four internal oscillators, four contact microphones and pre-amps, four simple tilt EQs and a spring reverb.

The surface of the instrument also featured textured conductive material, allowing for a controlled use of internal feedback.

Each of the oscillators was tuned to frequencies which excited different areas of the stage grill, creating distinct sounds. Contact microphones were temporarily attached to specific noisy sections of the stage, and the Stage Drone instrument was used to amplify the sounds of these.

The performance also used a modular synthesizer with several other bespoke modules built by Robert, including:

• Two five channel matrix mixers - used blend audio and route to 4 main channels and the subwoofer.

• A random trigger/gate generator

• A multichannel pingable EQ module

• A dual bandpass filter module

• The Chook a chaotically intermingled filter resonator instrument

• Two other mixers

• An output module

A prefabricated sampler and crossfaders (these were not built by Robert) were also used.