Xerocks is an installation designed to turn two copying machines into a musical instruments.

We see two photocopiers, massive and imposing, glossy black all over like a piano, in the middle of a dark room. Several spotlights are trained on these iconic objects like sculptures on display, accentuating their gleaming surfaces. Microphones, placed at strategic points inside the machine, capture the clatter of their internal workings. The body of the machines, moreover, holds a computer running a sound-processing program.

The sounds given off by the running of the machine are broadcast via a system of loudspeakers around the room.

Press a button on the machine and that will trigger a copying cycle, simultaneously generating a sequence of sounds.

By (mis)appropriating and thereby alienating this familiar piece of office equipment, Xerocks ironically morphs an imaging apparatus into a sound production device.

The installation pays homage to familiar machines and technologies that are soon to become obsolete : it’s a last stand of sorts, one final recycling before consignment to the scrapheap of technological history.

Real-time sound synthesis system CataRT by Diemo Schwarz.

A coproduction of Espace multimédia Gantner (CG90) and les Ondes, with the support of the SCAM Bourse d’aide Art numérique. Thanx to Wagner Company for providing the photocopiers.

Translated by Eric Rosencrantz