Monadology – research on tensions / sound sculpture

  • research on tensions / sound sculpture

“Monadology” is a sound sculpture that, through a marble ball game, explores Leibniz’s philosophical concept of monads, immaterial and dynamic entities, offering an artistic representation of the synthesis between the old and the new in the universal order.

Detailed description:
Monad, (from Greek monas โ€œunitโ€), an elementary individual substance that reflects the order of the world and from which material properties are derived.
The idea of monads was popularized by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Monadologia (1714). In Leibnizโ€™s system of metaphysics, monads are basic substances that make up the universe but lack spatial extension and hence are immaterial. Each monad is a unique, indestructible, dynamic, soullike entity whose properties are a function of its perceptions and appetites. Monads have no true causal relation with other monads, but all are perfectly synchronized with each other by God in a pre-established harmony. The objects of the material world are simply appearances of collections of monads.
This marble game sculpture is illustrating Leibniz work defining Monads as a Synthesis of Old and New.
In terms of the former, they do the work of substantial forms, possessing an entelechy which guarantees that they unfold through time as they ought.

Technical description

  • The creation is a digital work.
  • All modelised with Blender v2.9.
  • It is predominantly using physics simulation of 50 independent balls, with exact replica of physical weight and size to adequately simulate gravity and the resulting random movement of the balls in the game.
  • The interaction of all musical /mechanical instruments (piano hammers, percussions, etc) are also running into the simulation so that the whole digital installation is effectively running as if it were created in the real world.
  • Each resulting percussion of balls, instruments or other has been extracted from the simulation and used its timeline to create independent tracks into Cubase (piano, percusions, balls etc).
  • EW Hollywood DST Sound libraries used to create the resulting soubndtrack.

@copyrightfrance
Arnaud Quercy Digital Creation / AQC0302 / 2021

Leave a Comment