Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Copper Plate

A physical signal processor that amplifies sound through a copper plate while simultaneously picking up sound through the same plate. Eight piezoelectric discs are affixed to the back of an 11” diameter copper plate. The device’s electronics allow two signals to be taken in, amplified, and driven through the plate using any two piezoelectric elements. The remaining six can be selectively used as microphones to pick up the vibrations of the sound in the plate at different locations. Internal normaling allows multiple elements to be combined internally. Physical manipulation of the plate and placement of objects on the plate can be heard through the copper as well as altering the sounds that are being played through it.

Present in:

Afterthought
Dense Day Cooling
Fake Memories Object
Here
Is This The Spot?
Wet Hologram

Origin: Designed and constructed by Joseph Kramer
Materials: Wood, copper, electronics
Year: 2015