Harddisko, hard disk orchestra


Harddisko is an installation made by Valentina Vuksic (a Media Art student at the Zurich University of Design and Arts), focused on what is really at the core of any ‘computer music’ discourse: the raw PC sounds produced by the hard disk’sheart. The project is based on getting for free some flawed hard disks, produced by different producers and with different characteristics. The supply is made in the area where the installation is built (even digging in electronic waste). Then the hard disk’s cases are removed and a special pickup is mounted on the drive’s head, connected to a sound mixer. As soon as the hard disks are plugged to the electricity the head starts to generates sounds, because of the start up procedure basic required movements. The requirement that every hard disk is noticeably different from the others (different producers, models, firmware versions, etc. etc.) guarantees a surprising diversity of sounds. It’s a diversity that naturally fascinates in the same way a work made by the most different musical instruments does: everyone with its own peculiar sound specificity, everyone with its own story to tell. The conductor of this futuristic orchestra holds a switch (instead of the classic stick) with which he plugs or unplugs each disk, embodying the same On/Off logic of any computer process.

Vito Campanelli