Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Robbie Avenaim, Absolute Sudden (2012) at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore  

Motor-Stick 360° by Robbie Avenaim from Liquid Architecture.

Early Days

In 2000, Robbie started placing small vibrators and personal massagers on his drumkit and other percussion instruments to create constant tones. These tones assisted in a greater scope of tonal range and texture in his performances. He remembers getting very strange looks from the sales staff in sex shops when he bought several vibrators at a time!

Taking one of these devices apart later that year, he discovered the counterbalance mechanics within and started to modify them. He soon worked out that a small counterbalance caused a smooth vibration, but a larger one caused the machine to jump around with crazed movements. This was a sex toy no longer! Robbie bought some larger motors from electrical hardware stores and used fifty cent coins with an off-centre hole drilled through them for some of the counterbalances.

The First Motor-Sticks

A breakthrough came when, in an effort to control the device's erratic movements, the shaking motor was attached to the back end of a drumstick with a hose-clamp. Hastily assembling a group of sounding items, Robbie placed the stick on top of them. Although the result was still far too chaotic, he was getting somewhere. Suspending the stick and motor assembly from its balance point proved to be the answer. The final step was adding a speed controller into the DC circuit, and the Motor-Stick was born.

My first duo experience with Robbie was at the F-hole series of concerts held at Bus Gallery, Melbourne in July 2003. He had already seen me perform with a variety of invented instruments and a few of my own machines since 2000, so he knew what to expect sonically. His kinetic contribution to the evening was a small motor mounted on top of a ladder, spinning a savage little rotary sawblade. The sawblade struck a small suspended bell, causing it to swing out wildly with demonstrable Doppler effect. The Motor-Stick had yet to make an appearance. They soon did, as an addition to the drumkit, often playing a variety of small percussion instruments arrayed on a separate drumhead.

In January 2006, Robbie received an Australia Council of the Arts grant to employ me as a mentor for a few months. I felt that this musician needed an education in sound art installation: its history, how to explore a gallery space and its acoustics, how to cope with extraneous (unwanted) sound, and how to stop damage caused by prying fingers. I bombarded him with information, from my own library of books, videos, photographs and with website links. He admits he was puzzled by the baptism into this new discipline, but then in May of that year, we were both invited to be part of the Mistral: Acoustic Sound exhibition at Artspace Gallery, Woolloomooloo. Robbie was at a loss with this new context. I suggested using the shaking tree branch idea he had related to me a few weeks ago and using the Motor-Stick motors to do the shaking. The Sonic Tree (2006) was replete with bells and small rattles hidden amongst the leaves, and a Motor-Stick playing a thumb-piano inside a gourd. The gourd had a twofold purpose: it acted as a resonator for the thumb piano, and it also stopped the Motor-Stick from swinging out of its playing field. This was still a problem. Robbie tried fixing it with a 'footy post' at each end of the stick's playing arc for other performances, but a better answer was to come.

November 2006 saw us both exhibiting installations for the Unsound 06 festival in Wagga. On the second day of the festival we all boarded a vintage steam train for the Loco Motivusproject. The train made a round-trip through the local countryside with stops to see and hear various artistic works at different rural locations. Works were also shown in carriage compartments. Robbie used the antique brass overhead luggage racks from which to suspend four large cymbals and their attendant Motor-Stick devices. Passengers stood at the compartment's door and gazed in.

In November 2007, Robbie, Dale Gorfinkel and I assembled a large array of kinetic sonic devices under the title Vaucanson's Duck: A Festival of Automated Instruments and Installations at Bus Gallery (the name refers to a famous life-sized motorised robotic duck device from 1739). Robbie later told me that it was here, by closely examining the ten works that I had contributed, that he really began to comprehend the compositional potential of sound sculpture.

Robbie's first opportunity to take these new ideas and technologies overseas came in August 2012, when he was invited to exhibit at the Sonorous Duration festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. In a large space, Absolute Sudden (2012) comprised eight Motor-Stick machines suspended from the ceiling. These were all large variants with beaters of fishing rod about one metre long. Each Motor-Stick played a family of different sounding materials: metal, wood, paper, plastic, hide, etc. An homage to the Southeast Asian location was the use of a Cambodian kong von thom gong set, its circular layout suiting the sweep of the Motor-Stick perfectly.

The Slip Ring

Up to this time the Motor-Stick still suffered from one problem, it tended to travel in one radial direction due to the counterbalance's rotation. Robbie partially fixed this by carefully arranging the struck objects so taller ones would cause the sticks to bounce back, but it wasn't dependable for long durations such as in exhibition settings.

A slip ring is a small electromechanical device that allows power transmission from a stationary power line to a rotating structure, and these small and inexpensive devices proved to be the problem's solution. Robbie could now run power from a remote source down through the Motor-Stick's suspension wires to the motor, and with a slip ring as part of the suspension, the Motor-Stick could merrily dance in complete circles endlessly!

Testing Grounds installation from Liquid Architecture on Vimeo.

Mobiles

When Robbie discovered the mobiles of sculptor Alexander Calder and adapted these principles to his own work, the area the Motor-Stick devices could cover increased radically, which meant an increase in sonic objects which could be played. Not only could the Motor-Stick now play in complete circles, the circles could travel across a space.

Robbie's Motorgenic exhibition at The Substation, Newport in November, 2016 was his most ambitious yet, encompassing several rooms of works and videos. The major work was an impressive mobile structure of several horizontal crossbars, and supported a long Motor-Stick travelling over a large area. The array of struck objects included three drums, two vertical gongs, some blocks of wood and fifty cymbals.

In June 2018, I visited Robbie at the Testing Grounds studios in Melbourne to see the next development. A jury-rigged mobile of horizontally balanced rods moved two Motor-Sticks around the space. Also suspended from the mobile were several tubes of thick bamboo which the Motor-Stick could strike, causing the whole structure to dip and sway elegantly. More bamboo, some cymbals and other percussion objects were positioned on the floor, all within the range of the Motor-Sticks. The work played beautifully. The energy imparted to the horizontal rods from the Motor-Sticks striking the floor and the sounding objects, both suspended and floor-mounted, kept them languidly traversing the space. This in turn, gave the two suspended Motor-Sticks the chance to play the total area beneath the mobile. Robbie's selection of sounding objects gave the work a strong coherence, and were a fitting choice for the room's acoustics.

Editor: Liang Luscombe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Co-published by Liquid Architecture and the Australian Music Centre, 'Robbie Avenaim: A Complex Warmth' presents four accounts from close peers and collaborators Oren Ambarchi, Ernie Althoff, Clare Cooper, and Robin Fox of the artistic practice of experimental percussionist Robbie Avenaim. The editor would like to thank the writers for their contributions, Robbie Avenaim for access to his extensive archive, and Joel Stern for editorial support.