PIA VAN GELDER
/ WORK / CREATIVE WORK:
PVG SANS PCB, OngoingPerformances under the moniker PVG sans PCB turns away from preassembled instruments to build circuits live from scratch. Starting each performance in silence with an empty electronic ‘breadboard,’ using common electronic components and various objects, Pia makes a series of oscillators that create tones that are mostly noisy, dissonant, unpredictable and if we’re lucky, entirely surprising, sometimes even harmonious.
Photograph of performance at Material Sound Performances at Plimsoll Gallery 2021, Hobart. Photograph by CollingsCreative
In a warehouse space that reminds me of the 1990s in Sydney (dark, lived in and smelling of smoke), Pia van Gelder sits to perform in front of very little. That is, she doesn’t have any instruments, analogue equipment such as her usual modular synth or a laptop. Instead, she has a sectioned box full of electronic components, an empty breadboard or two, plus a mixing desk. The performance begins with Pia making a basic synthesiser from scratch. As she adds components, sounds start being produced becoming more interactive as layers of sounds are built up. For example, a light sensor is added, and a strobing LED is brought into the system to rhythmically activate synthesised sounds.
The performance is incredibly risky as breadboard circuits are notoriously unstable. Thus, Pia performs instability and indeterminacy over the course of twenty minutes. There is no room to perfect or stabilise the instrument. The audience watches and hears the fruits of her labour as they are put together. At one point, after having deftly built her system, Pia stops and rests her head in her hands, allowing the system to generate and develop its sounds unhindered by the artists tinkering. While the sonic outcome is not unlike a modular synth performance, the sounds are electronic and straightforward in their range, the effect of watching an instrument being built is surprisingly mesmerising.
Caleb Kelly (author of Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, 2009 and Gallery Sound, 2017). From: http://sublimeimperfections.org/caleb-kelly/
Video documentation of 2015 performance for Liquid Architecture, Melbourne. Video by Alex Cuffe, aka TT Sktls