Hitting the fan

Composition by Elise Plans. 

"My obsolete sound is of a quirky little table fan, the Philips Ventilator HA2728, which has ambitions larger than its small size with its bright colours and smooth curvy design.

"The sounds from the piece have almost all come from manipulating the recording, using sampling and time-stretching. I built a patch in Pure Data with various algorithms to play with the sound, and then ‘played’ this as an instrument which I recorded and clipped-up to arrange in Logic Pro.

"At the start of the piece I have attempted to suggest that the listener is zooming-in to the sound in the same way that you can zoom in visually with a microscope, so that you become very small as the environment enlarges around you, perhaps how the fan would sound to a fly or a gnat.

"The only sound used in addition to the original sound file is a field recording of a suburban soundscape, with the sound of traffic, birds and a plane. This is to bring the listener back to the context of this